Interesting Word Substitution
I am not sure if anyone else will as amused as I am with the following quote, but I just had to share it. This is from an article titled International nuclear fuel program set for Monday published on January 9, 2009 in the Pahrump Valley Times, which bills itself as Nye County’s largest newspaper circulation. (Nye county is in Nevada, northwest of Las Vegas.)
A public hearing to gather comments on the problematic (sic, emphasis added) environmental impact statement for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP — which could determine if the U.S. Department of Energy will pursue recycling nuclear waste — will be held at 7 p.m. Monday at the Bob Ruud Community Center.
Of course, the real word that is part of the abbreviation PEIS should have been programmatic, vice problematic, but perhaps the reporter just did not hear the word correctly. With the current political difficulty, even within the nuclear industry, of deciding just how to best recycle and reuse nuclear fuel, I think that the malapropism works well here.
