A LOT of people in the nuclear industry pronounce it as 'nucular'. I'm a little horrified.

You can read all about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucular

But it's not something to be horrified by; it's no different from how we commonly pronounce "February" without the first "r", or "government" without the "n", or "Wednesday" flipping the "dne" to "nd".

What's even more interesting is that it's only in the context of weapons/energy. The same person will say "nuclear family" the way it's spelled.

But in the weapons/energy context, it's just a natural re-use of the suffix in "moleCULAR", "oCULAR", "cirCULAR". Technically wrong in terms of its derivation, but it feels entirely natural to say, and requires less tongue movement.

It's not due to a lack of education or anything. It's more like a regional dialect, where the region is nuclear weapons and energy.

This may be wrong or apocryphal or a third thing:

But I recall reading that this is a deliberate affect used by those who work with nuclear material. Partly as a shibboleth, partly as a means of making the word easier to say quickly.

It came up because George W Bush would pronounce it “nucular” and that was given as the reason. All if my memory serves that is.

Simpson fans, surely, for obvious reasons.

I’d bet that they love the foilage in fall, too.