I don’t spend a lot of time brooding about such things as nuclear holocaust.

But when I found out last week that the federal government is looking to put South Carolina in the business of manufacturing plutonium pits — essentially doomsday triggers — it pushed my hot buttons.

This is a bad idea on many levels.

First, a little background.

About 20 years ago, the Russians agreed with us to get rid of some of the excess plutonium the two superpowers had built up over the years by foolishly racing to see who could make the most bombs. The plan was to convert the stuff into a form that could be used in nuclear power plants, a process called mixed-oxide fuel fabrication (MOX).

We would build our MOX plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken County, where

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