As it deals with nuclear waste, the Savannah River Site near Aiken has an uncommon talent for wasting huge sums of taxpayer dollars. Recently, an SRS Citizens Advisory Board suggested that a two-year delay of a nuclear waste processing facility at the site could cost taxpayers $1 billion, according to a recent story in the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

That cost overrun comes on top of another SRS project costing an unexpected $2.5 billion more than the $1 billion originally expected, according to a recent Greenville News story. The latter project involves the conversion of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.

These costly projects have to be among the most glaring examples of federal government waste and inefficiency. They don't seem to attract much attention, however, either from the Bush administration or from South Carolina's congressional delegation.

A concern is that the state's congressional delegation may see some of these SRS projects as boondoggles -- but they're our boondoggles. Money may be wasted, but it's wasted on South Carolina jobs. Such a cynical view may not be true -- and it should not be true. South Carolina's congressional delegation should be deeply concerned about these SRS cost overruns. The delegation should put pressure on the federal Energy Department to control wasteful SRS spending.

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The SRS Salt Waste Processing Facility will be delayed two years -- to 2011 -- because the Energy Department asked the private company building the facility to redesign it to withstand natural disasters such as earthquakes and tornadoes. One may question why the facility, which will separate high and low levels of 36 million gallons of highly lethal radioactive waste, couldn't originally have been designed in that manner.

The $1 billion increase in the project, originally projected to cost $440 million, is based on the fact that it costs about $1 million per day to store and process waste at the site. Increased construction costs also are part of the $1 billion figure.

Meanwhile, the price tag on the SRS plutonium-to-fuel project was raised by 250 percent to $3.5 billion due to "weaknesses in project management" and poor oversight by Energy Department officials to make sure problems were identified and costs contained, according to a Energy Department audit.

With almost a half-billion dollars spent on the facility, very little has happened at the site. Trees and power lines have been cleared to make room for the plant, but building hasn't begun. Only 70 percent of the design work had been completed.