COLUMBIA - A facility that would convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants won't begin construction in 2004, after all.

Disagreements between Russia and U.S. contractors have delayed the construction of the mixed-oxide facility until at least May 2005, a federal official said. The United States and Russia have committed to disposing of 68 metric tons of plutonium in parallel programs.

Construction of the facility at the Savannah River Site near Aiken was scheduled to begin as early as this spring.

"Because the Russian facility is delayed, so is the U.S. facility," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, a division of the Department of Energy. "I can't emphasize enough that this delay does not in any way diminish the U.S. commitment for proceeding with plutonium disposition."

The plant, expected to cost about $3.8 billion and create about 500 jobs, has been criticized by antinuclear activists who favor encasing excess plutonium in glass and burying it in Nevada.

And the delay didn't please former Gov. Jim Hodges, who had vowed to lie down in front of plutonium shipments headed to SRS because he feared the material would be stored there indefinitely. Hodges took the U.S. Energy Department to court to stop the shipments, but he ultimately lost.

"If these delays continue or, God forbid, they shelve the project, then SRS has moved into the status of a long-term storage facility for plutonium, which is dangerous," Hodges said recently.

Congress has been committed to spending money on the program, giving it about $400 million last year to start building the plant. President Bush has proposed $368 million for the plant next year.

There also are penalties if the Energy Department fails to begin producing the fuel by 2011.

Sen. Lindsey Graham's spokesman Kevin Bishop said a law approved in 2002 requires the government to finish the project, process the plutonium and ship it out of South Carolina. The plutonium-blended fuel will be burned in two Duke Energy power plants near Charlotte, N.C.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also must OK a construction license for the plant, but it has been slowed because the Energy Department wants its chief contractor to move a radiation boundary closer to the plant's site.

Tom Clements with Greenpeace said the delay could make it harder for the department to get more funding.

"They will have an extremely difficult time justifying to Congress why they need construction money for fiscal year 2005 when they were not able to spend all the money Congress gave them in 2004," Clements said.

The disagreement with Russia is over liability issues. U.S. contractors want legal protection in the event the U.S.-designed Russian plant encounters problems.

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