In a budget proposing to spend more than $2.7 trillion over the course of 2007, it is little surprise that such big-ticket items as the record $439.3 billion defense budget became most newsworthy. Yet somewhat overshadowed is that portion of the budget aimed to deal with something so many people use daily — energy.

Deep in the bowels of his budget, President George W. Bush sets aside $23.6 billion for the Department of Energy.

In fact, the president has been talking about energy a lot lately. In his State of the Union address, he said, "Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil." Mr. Bush then pledged "to change how we power our homes and offices."

There may be many things about which Mr. Bush and I do not see eye-to-eye, but in terms of energy and the way we Americans consume it, I could not agree with him more. Americans in general consume a lot of the stuff. Actually, our country boasts about 25 percent of total world consumption. With a population less than 5 percent of the total world population, our per capita intake is scary.

With those numbers in hand, I find two feasible paths we might take. One, we stop consuming energy right now and head for the caves.

This, I am afraid, is not the most probable path for America and its people. Instead, we must focus on how to power our homes and offices with less impact, just as Mr. Bush implied. Given the plethora of energy options, we can go in many directions. One way, though — nuclear energy — seems to have garnered a bad name.

I will be the first to admit the U.S. nuclear industry has had its bad days, namely Three Mile Island. However, after that event, the whole regulatory system got a facelift. Things work differently now, and the nuclear industry enjoys a much safer track record than its fossil-fuel counterparts with no injuries or deaths, even including TMI. We are in a new era of nuclear.

That is not the point I want to make, though. For me, getting into energy conversations typically leads me to back the nuclear industry. Often, I run into opponents, and while I respect those opinions, I feel like I am running into a brick wall. The problem is that many people just do not have an understanding of what the science of nuclear power entail. Because of this information gap, when the president calls for "safe nuclear energy," many are apt to attack his words.

Well, what exactly does "safe nuclear energy" mean? "Safe" alludes to the many advances the nuclear industry has seen in the past decade or two. One example pertinent here is the development of Generation IV reactors, designs that enhance the already strong safety and economics of current systems. Bush proposes $32 million for further research and development of these designs.

Likewise, Mr. Bush proposed $60 million to ITER, the international fusion power experiment in France. Along with initiatives in solar, bio-fuels and clean coal technology, this provides for a program aimed at accommodating our mounting consumption while accounting for its effects on Mother Earth.

What I call for, then, is not simply a debate using each of our own concrete ideals regarding nuclear energy, but rather a discussion in which everyone opens their mind and considers every rational option we have "to change how we power our homes and offices."

Jeremy Roberts is a junior majoring in nuclear engineering.