Dumpers lose dump

In South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford, U.S. Reps. Joe Wilson and Gresham Barrett, and a host of other South Carolina political figures—all Republicans—were harshly critical of President Obama for ending funding for the proposed Yucca Mountain dump for high level nuclear wastes in Nye County, Nevada.

If the Yucca dump doesn’t open, South Carolina’s commercial nuclear power plants would have to continue storing their waste on site. The Savannah River nuclear weapons complex would also continue storing thousands of containers of waste. The officials are anxious to get the waste out of their state and into Nevada.

Meanwhile, although there is still no long term answer to the waste problem, the president authorized the construction of two new commercial nuclear power plants in Georgia, the first such authorizations in decades. Obama tried to bracket nuclear power with alternative energy sources: “Make no mistake—whether it is nuclear energy or solar or wind energy, if we fail to invest in these technologies today, we’ll be importing them tomorrow.”