Lexington County’s area lost 5,000 jobs last year.

When SC Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper shut down a $9 billion nuclear project, they fired 5,000 highly-paid workers, many living in the county.

Now another 2,000 nuclear jobs are at risk and perhaps as many as 11,000 at the Savannah River Site less than 30 minutes from Lexington County.

That’s an easy commute for many local residents who work there.

Even more is at stake if federal officials shut down the troubled MOX program.

The Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility is designed to convert tons of weapons-grade plutonium to mixed-oxide fuel that can be used in nuclear reactors.

Attorney General Alan Wilson warned that closing MOX may make South Carolina “a dumping ground for nuclear waste.”

Wilson’s attorneys aim to force the Energy Department to keep MOX going.

Washington contends a better solution is a process called “dilute and dispose.”

It dilutes plutonium with inert material to keep it out of nuclear weapons and disposes of it at repositories like Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which former Sen. Harry Reid blocked.

MOX’s projected cost was $4.8 billion if completed by 2016. Officials now estimate it will cost $17.2 billion and take until 2048 – at a cost of $1.2 million a day.

The US has spent $5.4 billion on the plant since construction began in 2007.

Congress continued construction after US District Court Judge Michelle Childs last month ordered it.

Judge Childs rebuked the Energy Department for its “countless commitments” to accept plutonium at SRS with the understanding it would be processed there.

“Now, DOE is reneging on its promises,” she ruled.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are haggling over keeping it open after Oct. 1.

The US Energy Department wants to use the MOX facility to produce plutonium cores for new nuclear weapons to modernize the nation’s defenses.

The judge’s order, federal officials say, may force them to produce cores elsewhere.

If core production goes elsewhere and MOX is closed, the future of 11,400 SRS workers is at risk.

MOX was created under a US-Russian nuclear closure agreement 18 years ago.

Each side was to dispose of at least 37.5 US tons of weapons-grade plutonium.

Two years ago Russia suspended the agreement.

Like the SCE&G-Santee Cooper abandoned project, MOX has its critics.

“It’s a classic example of a big project run amok and continuing for parochial reasons, which is jobs in South Carolina,” said Tom Clements, director of the watchdog group SRS Watch and Friends of the Earth.

MOX has supporters, too.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said he hopes Judge Child’s ruling will allow SC’s congressional delegation to work to “ensure South Carolina is not left holding the bag.”