As of Oct. 1, almost 1,200 workers at the Savannah River Site will have worked themselves out of a job. As various projects come to a close at the site that produced nuclear weapons during the Cold War, employees are having to look for work elsewhere.

At its peak in the 1950s, the 310-square-mile facility, run by the federal Energy Department, employed 35,000 workers but is now down to about 12,000. That still makes SRS a major economic engine for South Carolina and particularly the Aiken area.

Appropriately, South Carolina's congressional delegation is working to ensure that the site has a future beyond tending the vast legacy of nuclear waste. Almost all those futures, however, involve nuclear research or processing nuclear waste for other uses. That calls for some skepticism: In the rush to create new SRS jobs or protect old ones, South Carolina's state and national leaders must make sure SRS doesn't merely become a dumping ground for the nation's nuclear waste.

Former Gov. Jim Hodges, during his tenure, sounded the alarm about SRS becoming a dumping ground. He even threatened to lie down in front of trucks carrying plutonium from Rocky Flats, Colo., in 2002. Hodges' sentiment was melodramatic, perhaps, but principled. Similar expressions of concern need to be voiced by today's state and federal representatives.

SRS's job picture, however, does look promising. One portion of the 198,344-acre site has been set aside for the nation's first plant that turns weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial reactors. The plant that would produce mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, would create as many as 1,500 jobs at its peak. Even the construction of the plant, at one time estimated to be $4 billion, would carry a substantial economic impact.

More nuclear waste also is headed for the site to possibly be turned into spacecraft fuel. In addition, a consortium of companies is considering building the nation's first commercial nuclear power plant in 30 years at SRS.

The state's congressmen are lobbying for new reactors for research and to make hydrogen for cars of the future. That could fit in well with the Upstate's push to become a center of auto research through the International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR) in Greenville as well as the area's auto-related industries. Hydrogen fuel also holds some hope of helping to wean this country off its dependence on Mideast oil.

Many of these jobs could be high-paying ones. The nation's newest national lab, the site's Savannah River National Laboratory, employs a 75-person research staff, a quarter with doctorates.