| Restore SRS funding It has been said there are two things you should never watch being made if you have a weak stomach - sausage or legislation. Those of us who support missions for the Savannah River Site have very upset stomachs today - but we have our fingers crossed that it's only going through the "sausage-making stage" and that eventually everything will turn out all right. What's happened is that a key U.S. House subcommittee has slashed tens of millions of dollars out of four key programs in a bill that was being counted on to generate new missions and jobs at the site. Gone is all the money to start on the Modern Pit Facility that's slated to build new triggers for nuclear weapons; the dollars earmarked for the mixed-oxide program to convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants has been reduced by half; all money needed to upgrade the newly named Savannah River National Laboratory has been denied; and $31 million has been stripped out of President Bush's hydrogen fuel initiative, which also was expected to benefit SRS because it's a perfect fit for the expertise of scientists there. The House bill even cuts $76 million out of the high-level nuclear waste cleanup program that for years has been the site's primary mission. Cynics have been saying for a long time that Congress doesn't really want to give SRS any new missions - it just wants to clean it up and shut it down. But based on what the House is doing with this bill, it just wants to shut the place down; forget about cleaning it up. It is in situations like this that a state's legislative delegation is supposed to show their stuff. Well, they're trying - lawmakers from South Carolina and Georgia are seeking to undo the damage. Leading the charge are Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., in whose district SRS is located. According to the senator, there's apparently something going on between the chairman of the appropriations committee, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, and two federal agencies - the Department of Defense and Department of Energy - that's causing the SRS funding problems. The good news here is that Hobson has accepted an invitation from Graham and Barrett to visit the Aiken-area site - hopefully to provide him with a better perspective of SRS' potential. There's a lot of experienced scientific and nuclear engineering talent out there, as well as useful infrastructure for nuclear weapons programs. As Graham said, "We're not talking about creating a new generation of nuclear weapons," but simply maintaining and upgrading the inventory of nuclear weapons we already have. In any event, area residents need to get behind the congressmen's campaign to restore the funds. It would be unconscionable to let the House cuts stand. The huge cutback in cleanup funds alone would delay indefinitely getting rid of 50 years worth of radioactive by-products. After a half century of patriotic support for the controversial site, the CSRA deserves a better sausage than that.
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