Editorial
Herald-Journal
Spartanburg, South Carolina
June 2, 2008
South Carolina 8, Nevada 5
Candidates should say how they will get plutonium out of South Carolina

South Carolina has more electoral votes than Nevada, so why are the presidential candidates throwing the Palmetto State under the nuclear bus in order to curry favor in Nevada?.

It's because Nevadans are more vocal than South Carolinians about pursuing their interests.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have already declared their opposition to opening a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. They did so when they were campaigning for votes in the Nevada caucuses earlier this year.

Now, Republican candidate John McCain, who has supported opening the Yucca Mountain facility, seems to be drawing back from that position. In a speech on nuclear security last week, he said he proposed an international repository for high-level nuclear waste, claiming such a facility could eliminate the need for Yucca Mountain.

Even if an international facility could be built, it would be decades before it would be operational.

All of these positions are meant to pander to Nevadans who don't want Yucca Mountain, which is specifically located and designed for the safe storage of high-level nuclear waste, to be used.

And this is all at the expense of South Carolina.

The Palmetto State has become the dumping ground for the nation's surplus plutonium. It has been shipped to the Savannah river Site from defense facilities around the nation. This dangerous material has been pilling up at a facility not designed for this type of use and in a location unsuitable for long-term storage of highly radioactive waste.

South Carolina needs the Yucca Mountain facility to become operational if it hopes to get rid of this dangerous material.

The federal government said it had a two-pronged plan to move the surplus plutonium from this state. Some of it would be reprocessed into fuel for commercial power reactors, and some would be immobilized in glass and sent to Yucca Mountain.

The reprocessing plant has been delayed, and it looks like the facility in Nevada may never open, despite the fact that it is the safest place for the storage of this material.

So South Carolina will continue to be the nation's plutonium dumping ground. And Hillary Clinton, barack Obama and now, it seems, John McCain are fine with that.

What about the voters of this state: We have three more electoral votes to cast than Nevada. The presidential candidates should hear from South Carolinians on this issue. They shouldn't be allowed to pander to Nevada at South Carolina's expense.