The Nu-Clear Vision: Hind Sight on Reprocessing Arguments

Nuclear power in its not so finest form—nuclear waste—has recently sparked several debates and protesters. Major powers on all sides realize that a crucial situation has been thrust upon us by the aging nuclear reactor facilities across the nation. In the past two decades, research has been done on Yucca Mountain in order to assess the effectiveness of the location to become the nation’s comprehensive nuclear repository, AKA a Giant Radioactive Mountain. Yet, the hidden technology of reprocessing has somehow managed to escape the minds of many, or has been repressed by large organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Reprocessing is recycling. Simple right, then why are we not utilizing this equipment to lower the amount of radioactive wastes in storage and continue the use of nuclear power?

I am in favor of the continuation of nuclear energy and for the reprocessing of spent fuel cells. This has been made apparent in the last three projects that I have completed for this class: including an “unbiased” rhetorical analysis of the diverse arguments of Greenpeace, the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Sierra Club. To me, the recycling of already harvested and enriched uranium makes perfect sense, but I’m not trying to coerce others to believe that my opinion is the only opinion out there. I am merely trying to bring nuclear power/ nuclear waste to the front of the American public’s brain in order to save my job and the employment opportunities available to my friends and co-workers.

The newest project in my collection of various nuclear waste arguments has taken on the form of a short commercial, the “Click Boom Project” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtpxnb-kBKY). The ad is meant to be posted on pro-nuclear/ pro-reproc...

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...t the illogical reasoning used by Greenpeace in order to engage my audience. By relating two completely different events or statements to each other because they contained the same couple of words (nuclear, radioactive, waste, shipment), I convinced spectators how ludicrous these statements could be. Conveniently this tactic inadvertently played to the sympathetic appeal of the viewers, creating an absurdity that a majority of the student body could correlate with. However, in my second project—the commercial—trying to reach out to a wider group of people I tried appealing to popular culture. By using the song “The Choice is Yours” by Black Sheep, which is concurrently synonymous with the Kia commercial and the different choices that car buyers have, I took advantage of pictures of nuclear repositories and reprocessing to show that people still do have the choice.