Bad news, Rachel!

From "On Language" column by Frank Abate in the NY Times Magazine:

"The trouble with nuclear…is that the word has a very unusual sound pattern for an English word – three syllables, with stress on the first syllable and –cle –ar as the final two syllables. Amazingly, no other common English word has exactly this pattern; cochlear is very close, but not nearly as frequent. "NOO-kyuh-luhr"-sayers, who number in the many millions, in fact move the l in nuclear to the final syllable and thus avoid the unusual pattern. Thus nuclear takes on a more familiar sound pattern, similar to everyday English words like circular and muscular.

So, in his pronunciation of nuclear, Bush is in line with a national trend…" [Bold emphasis mine]

The horror…the horror.