THE US has a problem with plutonium. Along with Russia, it is dismantling a lot of nuclear weapons and needs to do something with the fissile material they contained.
So the government is paying a power company to burn it in a reactor to make electricity. The plutonium is first turned into mixed oxide reactor fuel 鈥� that is plutonium and uranium 鈥� in France, where MOX fuel is common. And the first consignment was shipped back to American shores this month.
Some people object to the idea of shipping plutonium from US government labs to fuel-making plants and then back to the power plants here. Too many opportunities for terrorists to get involved, they say.
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Critics have convinced the government鈥檚 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the power company that is going to use the MOX has not proved it can keep the stuff secure at its plant. So when the first shipment arrived the NRC would not let the company take delivery. It ended up being trucked to a government lab for safe keeping鈥ollowed by a retinue of Greenpeace protesters and heavily armed government guards.
THERE鈥橲 a four-letter word that is usually quite innocuous but can cause blood pressure to skyrocket when it is employed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The word is 鈥渟oon鈥�. How does this simple word cause such consternation? Here鈥檚 an example. A few years ago Frank Regan of Regancrest Farms in Waukon, Iowa, decided to pay biotech company Cyagra to clone two of his favourite dairy cows. It cost him a fair amount of money, but these cows were good milk producers, and he figured he would make back his investment in increased milk production.
Regan knew he could not make any money until the FDA had approved the sale of meat and milk from cloned animals. But he figured by the time the cows were ready to start producing, the decision would be made. After all, the FDA began chewing on this problem in 2001. And since October 2003, anyone who asked the FDA when it would decide the issue got the same answer: 鈥淪oon鈥�.
Now that response is getting a bit tiresome. It is not just farmers and ranchers who are frustrated. Consumer groups would like to know what the FDA is going to do. Even if the FDA does approve the sale of cloned meat and milk, consumer advocates would like to see special labels. They are convinced that even if there are no demonstrable health risks from cloned milk or meat, there is still a strong 鈥測uk鈥� factor that would steer most shoppers away from these products.
You can guess the timescale in which the regulatory agency says it will make a decision about labelling. 鈥淪oon.鈥�
