President Bush has proposed reducing oil imports by increasing the use of nuclear power, which he said in a recent speech was "one of the most promising sources of energy."
There is a problem, though: reactors make electricity, not oil. And oil does not make much electricity.
Nuclear reactors produce about 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States and about 8 percent of the total energy consumed. Oil accounts for 41 percent of energy consumption.
Could a few dozen more reactors, in addition to the 103 running now, cut into oil's share of the energy market?
"Indirectly, but very indirectly," said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a nonprofit group that studies the economics of oil. People who think nuclear power is a way to reduce oil imports are "confusing several issues," he said.
Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, added, "No one knowledgeable about energy policy would link nuclear power and gasoline prices."
In the puzzle of energy consumption and production, however, experts point to three intersections of oil and nuclear power that would offer opportunities to cut demand for oil, pushing down its price and strategic significance. But all are limited, clumsy, expensive or dependent on new technologies whose success is not guaranteed, the experts say.
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