Support Us
Our Supporters Helped Us..
Block the 5-Laning of Highway 21 across St. Helena Island in Beaufort County in 1997..
Donate NowWhat is the issue?
South Carolina is being targeted as the nation’s nuclear waste dump. At the Savannah River Site, near Barnwell, supporters hope to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel through a process dubbed “reprocessing.” Unfortunately, reprocessing increases the volume of nuclear waste by 20 times, produces no useful fuel, and costs hundreds of billions of dollars. Nuclear power plants in other states and nations get to rid themselves of their waste. South Carolina gets stuck with a costly radioactive burden for generations to come.
How would it affect South Carolina?
Reprocessing was already tried once in South Carolina. Today the U.S. Department of Energy is spending billions to clean up the toxic mess it created. The waste at the Savannah River Site, location of past and future reprocessing ambitions, is now known as the “single greatest environmental risk in South Carolina.” Restarting reprocessing would only increase this risk – at a cost our nation’s leading scientists say has “no economic justification.” Worse, because there is no permanent place to dispose of it and no existing technology to it, waste that comes to South Carolina for reprocessing will stay in South Carolina – forever.
What can you do about it?
South Carolina is the state most often mentioned for a large reprocessing complex. That is at least partly due to the support of Senator Lindsay Graham and Representatives James Clyburn and Gresham Barrett. Our political leaders must understand that South Carolina will not stand for becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump. Instead, it is simpler and cheaper to store spent nuclear fuel on site and forge ahead with plans to store it safely and permanently at a location like Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
- We will keep the nation’s – and perhaps the world’s – nuclear waste outside of South Carolina.
- We will prevent the expansion of a legacy of contamination along the Savannah River.
- We will save billions of federal dollars that would be better invested in cost-effective and productive energy resources, like renewable energy and energy efficiency.
- South Carolina will become the nation’s – and maybe the world’s – nuclear waste dump.
- Palmetto State residents will be exposed to the risk of even greater volumes of toxic, radioactive nuclear waste.
- Billions of our tax dollars will be wasted on a process with no prospect of producing cost-effective energy.
