Clyburn aims at Trust Fund

Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., struck a note for his fellow South Carolinians last week.

As the Edward Teller Lecture speaker, Rep. Clyburn told the audience at the event held in Augusta that if Yucca Mountain is removed as a site for permanent disposal of high level nuclear waste, South Carolina should get its share of the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund back. The fund has been collected since 1982, Rep. Clyburn said, and was created to pay for the use of Yucca Mountain as the final resting place for the waste.

"If Yucca Mountain is dead," the congressman said, "then ratepayers should get their money back. And if the federal government refuses to take the Cold War waste out of South Carolina, I'm going to see to it that our state and its citizens are compensated."

The state's electrical users have already paid some $1.2 billion into the Trust Fund, trusting that the federal government's word was good. Twenty-seven years later that is not the case, and perhaps Rep. Clyburn's efforts will return to South Carolinians money that has been sent to Washington in good faith.