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Main Entry: pork Pronunciation: ‘pOrk Function: noun In American political slang, it is politics (including government money, jobs, or favors) dealing with funding at the Federal level of local projects with little or no national significance yielding rich patronage benefits. In a literal sense a “pork barrel” is a barrel in which pork is kept, but figuratively speaking it is a supply of money, often the source of one’s livelihood. |
This week’s pork, served fresh, hot, and steamy: The administration and some congressional lawmakers are pushing to dust off nuclear reprocessing, a proposition that would be dangerous and expensive for generations of taxpayers to come. Reprocessing is no safer or less expensive than it was when the U.S. program was abandoned 30 years ago. Instead, proponents have simply repackaged the idea as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) and hope to plunk down $250 million for starter money toward what will likely be a $100 billion total price tag.
GNEP is a large-scale initiative to reprocess nuclear waste. While proponents argue reprocessing is designed to deal with the problem of nuclear waste, the complex process of separating uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel actually creates more high-level radioactive waste. The bottom line is, taxpayers will be stuck paying for a prohibitively expensive program that won’t make our nation any safer.
But the nation will be, at a minimum, $250 million poorer. Or, better put, the US taxpayer will be $250 million poorer.
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, GNEP
