South Carolina's governor has ordered the Highway Patrol to make plans to block the state's borders to trucks scheduled to bring in a large shipment of plutonium left over from the production of nuclear weapons.

According to The New York Times, Gov. Jim Hodges is afraid that once it's in South Carolina, the nuclear waste will never leave. He says the Bush administration has reneged on a plan worked out by the Clinton administration to move the plutonium out of the Energy Department's Savannah River Site nuclear processing and disposal complex after it is converted to power-plant fuel or encased in glass to keep it from being stolen. In May, the Bush administration said it didn't have the money to start the expensive process of stabilizing the plutonium and encasing it in glass. Instead, the waste will be stored in containers at the Savannah River Site while the issue is studied further.
That didn't sit well with Hodges. The Times reports that in a memorandum released by his office, Hodges ordered the state's public safety director to evaluate options for highway roadblocks. The governor told the paper that a federal lawsuit is also being considered.
Although Hodges believed that the shipments from Colorado were imminent, Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, told the paper that none are scheduled until this fall.