The big plutonium-to-fuel project at the Savannah River Site near Aiken is quickly becoming a striking example of wasteful, inefficient and irresponsible government. In 2002, that project was estimated at $1 billion, but a recent audit put the price tag at $3.5 billion -- a 250 percent increase. This project is beginning to smell like a huge boondoggle.

In part, the reason for the spike in costs was "weaknesses in project management" and poor oversight by Energy Department officials to make sure problems were identified and costs contained.

The audit's revelations get worse: Of the $950 million Congress appropriated for the project, almost half of it -- $453 million -- had been spent by July 2005 merely on design work by a consortium of private-sector energy companies. And only 70 percent of the design work had been completed.

This is an astounding and worrisome development for this project to convert 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors. U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, R-Travelers Rest, was right in expressing concern that Congress might be reluctant to fund the entire project.

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If the project doesn't move forward, South Carolina could be stuck with the dangerous plutonium for a very long time. The plant also means a lot of jobs for South Carolina, as many as 1,000 just for the building phase.

But 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.

Federal officials can't even seem to agree on how much money is left to begin building the plant. Jim Giusti, an Energy Department spokesman at SRS, said only $206 million remains available to build the plant, according to a story by Greenville News writer Paul Alongi. But National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes said there's $550 million set aside for construction. The NNSA is a semiautonomous agency within the Energy Department.

Part of a nuclear disarmament deal with Russia, the project at SRS involves tons of plutonium shipped to South Carolina for conversion into mixed-oxide fuel (MOX). South Carolina agreed to accept the dangerous nuclear material only after the Bush administration promised the plutonium would be processed and not stored here indefinitely.