Several members of the House Republican Caucus stood with Gov. Mark Sanford and other Republican leaders Tuesday to oppose President Obama's decision to not open the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility -- a political payoff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). 

Among those present were Reps.Roland Smith, Tom Young, and Don Smith of Aiken County; Rex Rice of Easley; Jeff Duncan of Clinton; Nikki Haley of Lexington; and Eric Bedingfield of Greenville.

As the Spartanburg Herald-Journal noted this morning:

Because Yucca Mountain has never opened, hundreds of facilities have been storing highly radioactive material they were never designed to house. This is particularly true at the Savannah River Site, which has been receiving plutonium from weapons facilities across the nation for the past decade.

The material was supposed to be here only temporarily before some of it was shipped off to be turned into fuel for nuclear reactors and the rest was transported to Yucca Mountain. As of now, neither of those plans is moving forward and all of the waste is sitting near the banks of a major river at a facility that was never designed to hold it.

It's likely that all of the 39 states and hundreds of sites forced by a political power grab to store this dangerous waste have similar stories. They need to make their voices heard, as do we.

The only way to handle this waste safely and avoid the waste of $10 billion is to use Yucca Mountain, and every possible way to force the opening of that facility should be employed.

Several other sites in South Carolina are currently housing this nuclear waste in facilities that were supposed to be temporary.

Read more about this in The State and the Orangeburg Times & Democrat.