From PRI, Public Radio International and KCRW Santa Monica, this is To the Point.

Nuclear power and climate change.

Hello again, I'm Arminolni, and this is To the Point from Public Radio International,

a daily look at the issues Americans care about most.

Nevada's Yucca Mountain won't be the final resting place for 60,000 tons of deadly or nuclear waste piling up at power plants all over the country. So what happens now to a nuclear industry that expected a shot in the arm from demand for clean energy to reduce global warming? No new plant has been licensed in the U.S. since the three-mile island accident

30 years ago, but Energy Secretary Henry Chu has promised to find a way. Has Europe developed

safer technologies? What about cost and weaponization? Would nuclear power be better or worse

than climate change? On reporter's notebook later on, the UN has been marking time on illegal drugs.

First, here's the news.

Support for To the Point comes from subscribers of KCRW Santa Monica and from the Public Radio International Program Fund,

whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation,

and the Rockefeller Foundation and its campaign for American workers. More at rockfound.org. Hello again, Mormon Alney, back with To the Point. Climate change, and the need for clean energy might revive America's nuclear industry, but will it? High cost and the fear of terrorism are still major issues, and without Nevada's

Yucca Mountain. Deadly nuclear waste has no place to go. We'll tackle that issue today.

On reporter's notebook, after 10 years, a United Nations campaign against drug traffic and drug

abuse has gone nowhere. Will the problem be resumed anyway?

First, this news update during last year's campaign, Barack Obama promised

to cut congressional earmarks by half. Today, he said he will sign a $410 billion budget bill

with no less than 8,500 pet projects just to keep the government going. The future demands that we

operate in a different way than we have in the past. So let there be no doubt.

This piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business

and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability

that the American people have every right to expect and demand.

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