The Savannah River. Photo courtesy Mountain Hermit via Flickr Earlier this year, President Obama canceled the federal government's plans to store high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and weapons facilities at the controversial Yucca Mountain site in Nevada -- but now there are concerns that South Carolina could become the permanent dumping ground for the dangerous waste.

That state is home to the Savannah River Site, a nuclear materials processing center along the Savannah River 25 miles southeast of Augusta, Ga. Built during the 1950s to refine nuclear material for weapons, the site no longer has any operating nuclear reactors and is engaged in cleanup activities.

Given the demise of Yucca Mountain, business leaders in South Carolina and Georgia are expressing worries that high-level waste at the Savannah River Site may now be left there permanently. Scientists have warned about potential environmental contamination from long-term storage of such highly radioactive waste in the Savannah River watershed.

This week the SRS Community Reuse Organization -- a nonprofit group working to diversify the region's economy and a supporter of the Yucca Mountain site -- released a report [PDF] calling for a special blue-ribbon panel to study options for disposing of the waste.

As the preface states:

The government's about face on this critical issue leaves state and local leaders with more questions than answers. Those responsible for public safety, job creation, image enhancement, and citizen confidence must now lead in a new reality. They must come to terms with their community's lingering -- perhaps permanent -- role as caretaker for the Nation's highly radioactive waste.

As a region, we are now left wondering what's next? How we will come together in unity to address a path forward in the wake of this broken promise -- one that has implications of the longest possible term and a potential chilling effect on the region's future growth and prosperity?

The group's report says that if and when a panel is assembled to plot a new strategy for high-level nuclear waste storage, the Savannah River Site region's leaders should get a "seat at the table."

This story originally appeared at Facing South.

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Lindsey GrahamSen. Lindsey Graham has stepped up to become the leading Republican advocate of a bipartisan climate bill.  In a New York Times op-ed on Oct. 11, Graham joined with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to put forward a framework for climate legislation that they say can pass Congress and become “the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.”

Graham wants a climate bill that will:

That’s certainly not the left-wing dream for a climate bill, but the right wing despises it nonetheless.  Graham has taken quite a beating from right-wing activists for partnering with Kerry and even for believing that climate change is a real problem. 

Graham has gotten lots of money from nuclear-power companies over the years, so it’s no surprise he’s pushing for legislation that would benefit the industry.  Mainstream enviros don’t like Graham’s nuclear boosterism, but are hesitant to be too critical because he could help get the 60 votes needed to push a climate bill through the Senate.  He’s already influenced Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, who recently said she might support a bill if it boosts nuclear power and oil drilling.

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Despite his work toward a climate bill in the Senate, Graham is no fan of the House climate bill that passed in June.  “What I’m trying to do is make sure that the Markey-Waxman bill from the House is dead,” he said at an Oct. 12 town-hall meeting in Greenville, S.C., where conservative activists were attacking him for his climate stance.

Do you know more about this senator’s stance on climate legislation?  Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

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I’m not saying Mark Sanford is happy that Michael Jackson died. But ... he is.

Still, some brains have room for more than one scandalous news story at a time. And so even as I mourn Jacko’s passing, I find I can’t stop thinking about Mark Sanford’s juicy, tan line-admiring emails. Specifically, this delightful malapropism that arose as he described an upcoming Asian travel swing in the summer of 2008: “Back to Columbia [S.C.] for Tuesday and then on Wednesday, as I think I had told you, taking the family to China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Thailand, and then back through Hong Kong on world wind tour.”

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Six tons of weapons-grade plutonium can continue on its way to South Carolina, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The decision, which upheld a lower court ruling, was a blow to Gov. Jim Hodges (D), who has vociferously protested storing the waste in his state. Hodges argued that the Department of Energy needed to conduct more thorough environmental studies and consider the long-term risk of the storage before shipping the waste, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was satisfied that the DOE had done its homework. The federal government plans to build facilities in South Carolina to convert the plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors, but Hodges fears those plans won't come to fruition and the waste will remain in his state. He vowed to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

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