By Bristow Marchant, Tribune News Service

With Donald Trump moving into the White House and former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid heading back to Nevada, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., is optimistic the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository soon could be back on the federal government’s agenda.

The South Carolina Republican told the Columbia Rotary Club on Monday that the president-elect’s transition team has distributed a survey to Energy Department personnel about the long-delayed facility in southern Nevada that could host nuclear waste now held in South Carolina — something Nevada’s Reid, the Senate’s minority leaders, long opposed.

“We’ve already put $1.5 billion into permanent storage there,” Wilson said, adding he hopes the retiring Reid “goes (home) to his just reward in Las Vegas.”

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