Savannah River Site

The Savannah River Site (SRS), formerly the Savannah River Plant, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) industrial complex located in South Carolina, United States, on land in Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell counties adjacent to the Savannah River. It lies southeast of Augusta, Georgia. The site was built during the 1950s to produce plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons. It covers and employs more than 10,000 people.

The SRS is owned by the DOE. The management and operating contract is held by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC (SRNS) and the Integrated Mission Completion contract by Savannah River Mission Completion. A major focus is cleanup activities related to work done in the past for American nuclear buildup. Currently none of the reactors on-site are operating, although two of the reactor buildings are being used to consolidate and store nuclear materials.

SRS is also home to the Savannah River National Laboratory and the United States' only operating radiochemical separations facility. Its tritium facilities are the United States' sole source of tritium, an important ingredient in nuclear weapons. The United States' only mixed oxide (MOX) manufacturing plant was being built at SRS. It was intended to convert legacy weapons-grade plutonium into fuel suitable for commercial nuclear power plants, but construction was terminated in February 2019.

Savannah River Plant

The Savannah River Plant (SRP) facilities were built in the 1950s on the Savannah River in Aiken and Barnwell Counties South Carolina, about southeast of Augusta, Georgia. Their function was to produce materials used in the fabrication of nuclear weapons, primarily tritium and plutonium, by irradiating target materials with neutrons in nuclear reactors. Five heavy-water reactors were built on the site. Other facilities at the plant included two chemical separation plants, a heavy water extraction plant, a nuclear fuel and target fabrication facility and waste management facilities. and by the end of the year all five reactors had been shut down.

Management

By the late 1980s, the terms of the original contract with DuPont no longer satisfied Congress. In particular, these was disatisfaction with the part of the contract that held that DuPont was not liable for damages in the event of an accident or litigation. DuPont felt that this was only fair, as the firm was operating the plant on a non-profit basis, and had accepted the contract only out of a sense of corporate patriotism, but Congress pressed for the contract to be revised. In 1987, DuPont notified the United States Department of Energy (DOE) that it would not continue to operate and manage the site when the latest extension expired in 1989.

The DOE put the contract out to tender. The Savannah River Plant would be operated for a profit of between $26 and $40 million (equivalent to between $ and $ million in ). The Price-Anderson Act provided liability protection for the operator. There were two bids: one from Westinghouse Electric with Bechtel, and one from a consortium headed by Martin Marietta with EG&G and United Engineers and Constructors. On 8 September 1988, DOE announced that the contract had been awarded to the Westinghouse Savannah River Company, a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric created to run the SRP. Westinghouse assumed control of the SRP on 1 April 1989, and one of its first actions was to rename the facility the Savannah River Site (SRS), reflecting the fact that there were several plants on the site and the primary focus had shifted from production of nuclear weapons to other missions. Existing employees were guaranteed continued employment, and the work force grew to 22,800 and the budget to $2.2 billion in 1991 (equivalent to $ billion in ), twice what it had been in 1989.

On the one hand, there was public pressure not to restart the reactors; on the other, there was a pressing need for tritium. A Westinghouse safety review in April 1989 found that K, L and P reactors could all be restarted, but attention was focused on K Reactor. In May 1990, Energy Secretary James D. Watkins announced that K Reactor would be restarted in December, followed by P Reactor in March 1991 and L Reactor in September 1991. South Carolina law now required that water discharged into the river be no warmer than . To meet this requirement, a cooling tower was built at a cost of $90 million (equivalent to $ million in ).

In December 1991, one of K Reactor's heat exchangers sprung a leak and of tritiated water was released into the river. Public utilities downstream closed their inputs until the contaminated water had passed. K Reactor went critical on 8 June 1992, but only for a test run. P Reactor was shut down permanently in February 1991. L Reactor, which was on standby, was ordered to be shut down permanently without the possibility of restart in April 1993, and in November 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary announced that K Reactor would not be restarted.

In 1995, DOE announced that it would seek an open selection process for the SRS contract, which was up for renewal. However, the only bid received was from the Westinghouse Savannah River Company. In addition to its partner Bechtel, Westinghouse now also brought in Babcock & Wilcox and British Nuclear Fuels. In a visit in 2004, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham designated the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), one of twelve DOE national laboratories. The agreement also prohibited the United States and Russia from restarting plutonium producing reactors that had already been shut down.

The contract was to be re-bid in 2006, but the DOE extended it for 18 months to June 2008. DOE decided to issue two new contracts: one for management and operations (M&O) and one for liquid waste. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) – a Fluor partnership with Honeywell – and Huntington Ingalls Industries (formerly part of Northrop Grumman) – submitted a proposal in June 2007 for the new M&O Contract. On 9 January 2008, it was announced that SRNS had won the M&O contract, with a 90-day transition period commencing on 24 January 2008. Savannah River Remediation (SRR) was awarded the contract for the Liquid Waste Operations.

In 2012, the M&O contract was extended by 38 months to 2016. In 2021, DOE awarded the new Integrated Mission Completion Contract to Savannah River Mission Completion, an LLC comprising BWX Technologies, Amentum's AECOM, and Fluor. Transition from the Liquid Waste Operations contract to the Integrated Mission Completion Contract was completed in early 2022. In 2025, 13,510 people were employed on the site. As of 2020, the economic impact of SRS was estimated to be $2.2 billion per year (equivalent to $ billion in ) in the surrounding region.

Environmental remediation

Decades of nuclear material production for defense purposes, along with the site's historical waste disposal practices, have led to significant environmental contamination, the accumulation of large quantities of nuclear waste and surplus nuclear materials requiring disposal, and the need to safely decommission numerous disused facilities. Disposal techniques, such as the use of seepage basins for liquid waste and underground tanks for high-level radioactive materials, directly contaminated soil, groundwater, and surface water. This contamination posed substantial risks to the health and safety of surrounding communities and local ecosystems. Soil contamination was particularly widespread, with over in D Area affected by coal ash disposal, the burial of soil contaminated following the 1966 Palomares incident in Spain, Furthermore, the site's location adjacent to the Savannah River, a major regional water source, presented a clear pathway for contaminants to migrate downstream, potentially impacting water quality for numerous communities and ecosystems. Consequently, recognizing these risks, the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and the environmental remediation of contaminated areas became imperative by the end of the 1980s.

thumb|SRNS engineers George Blount and Jeff Thibault inspect equipment used to remove low-level groundwater contamination.

In 1981, environmental monitoring disclosed the presence of trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene in groundwater near the M Area settling basin. These were non-radioactive solvents normally used by the dry cleaning industry but employed at the SRP as a degreaser. The basin had overflowed and contaminated the surrounding area, including Lost Lake, a wetland in a shallow depression. The organic chemicals were removed from the groundwater by pumping and treating the water. Heavy sludge and contaminated soil was dumped in the M Area settling basin, which was then capped with dense clay and covered with soil and grass. The process was completed in 1991 at a cost of $5.8 million (equivalent to $ million in ) from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

In the process, Lost Lake was drained, the vegetation and that of around was pulled up and burned, and the contaminated soil was replaced with soil cleaned with one of four treatments. About 150 plants of ten different species were planted around Lost Lake, which was allowed to refill, and aquatic vegetation was planted. Between 1993 and 1996, scientists from Westinghouse, the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Savannah River Forest Station of the United States Forest Service observed the amphibians gradually recolonizing Lost Lake; eventually 15 of the 16 species originally present returned.

An Effluent Treatment Facility began operations in October 1988 to treat low-level radioactive waste water from the F and H Area separations facilities. In 1989, the SRS was included on the National Priorities List and became a superfund site, regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Two years later, the mixed waste management facility, where waste containing lead and cadmium was disposed of until 1986, became the first site facility to be closed and certified under the provisions of RCRA. Construction began on a Consolidated Incineration Facility in 1993. In 1996, DWPF introduced radioactive material into a borosilicate glass vitrification process. F Canyon was restarted and began stabilizing nuclear materials.

thumb|left|Workers place contaminated sediment from the excavation area for the Lower Three Runs project into sacks for disposal.

The first high-level radioactive waste tanks were closed in 1997, and in 2000, the K-Reactor building was converted to the K Area Materials Storage Facility. Transuranic waste was contained and sent by truck and by rail to the Department of Energy (DOE) Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Project in New Mexico, with the first shipments beginning in 2001. The F Canyon and FB Line facilities completed their last production run in 2002.

On 3 July 2025, a worker discovered a wasp nest measuring of beta and gamma radiation. The nest was built in F-Area, next to liquid waste storage tank 17. Subsequently, three more nests were found. The nests were sprayed to kill the wasps, then bagged as nuclear waste, though no individual wasps were ever found. The report did not say where the contamination came from, only that it was "legacy radioactive contamination not related to a loss of contamination control". It was implied that the contaminant was tritium. Because wasps only fly a few hundred feet on average from their nest over their lifetime, it was deemed unlikely that any of them left the facility. Savannah River Site Watch, a local watchdog group, was highly critical of the report, calling it "at best incomplete".

Major facilities and operations

MOX fuel fabrication facility

In September 2000, the United States and Russia signed the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement. This agreement initially called for each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-grade plutonium by converting it into mixed oxide fuel (MOX fuel) that can be irradiated once through in commercial nuclear power reactors or, in the case of the United States, to immobilize part of its plutonium in glass or ceramic, as well, for direct disposal in a deep geological repository. In the United States, both strategies would convert the surplus weapon-grade plutonium into forms that would meet the "Spent Fuel Standard" introduced by the National Academy of Sciences in 1994, meaning that the plutonium would be difficult to acquire and rendered unattractive for weapons use.

thumb|right|Aerial view of the NNSA Mixed Oxide (MOX) construction site in September 2012. The facility was never completed.

The Savannah River Site was selected in 2007, with operations slated to begin in 2016, as the location of three new plutonium facilities for: MOX fuel fabrication; pit disassembly and conversion; and plutonium immobilization. On 1 August 2007, construction officially began on the MOX facility, which was expected to cost $4.86 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ). Following startup testing, the facility expected to process up to 3.5 metric tons of plutonium oxide each year.

In 2010, the agreement was amended to change the initially agreed disposition methods. Russia would instead use the MOX fuel route in its fast-neutron reactors BN-600 and BN-800. The Russian Federation met its obligations, completed its processing facility and commenced processing of plutonium into MOX fuel with experimental quantities produced in 2014 for a cost of about $200 million (equivalent to $ million in ), reaching industrial capacity in 2015. The United States decided to fully committing itself to the MOX fuel route. The initial cost estimate in 2014 was $18.6 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ); within a year this had blown out to $21.3 billion and a report by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) estimated the total cost over a 20-year life cycle for the MOX plant to be $27.2 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) if the annual funding cap was increased to $500 million or $29.8 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) if it were increased to $375 million. The Obama administration and first Trump administration proposed cancelling the project, but Congress continued to fund construction.

thumb|left|NNSA's Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction in 2010.|alt=An advanced construction site with mobile cranes

The Aiken Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit against the federal government claiming they have become a dumping ground for unprocessed weapons grade plutonium for the indefinite future and demanding previously agreed upon payment of contractual non-delivery fines. The federal government filed a motion to dismiss that was granted in February 2017. In 2018, the state of South Carolina similarly sued the federal government over the termination of the project, arguing that the DOE had not prepared an environmental impact statement concerning the unanticipated long-term storage of plutonium in the state and that the government had failed to follow the statutory provisions concerning obtaining a waiver to cease construction on the facility. In January 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected South Carolina's suit for lack of standing; in October 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state of South Carolina's petition of certiorari, thereby allowing the lower court's ruling to stand and the federal government to terminate construction.

In May 2018, Energy Secretary Rick Perry informed Congress he had effectively ended the about 70% complete project. Perry stated that the cost of a dilute and dispose approach to the plutonium will cost less than half of the remaining lifecycle cost of the MOX plant program. Russia had suspended its implementation of the agreement in October 2016, citing delays in the United States' implementation. In February 2019, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted a request to terminate the plant's construction authorization.

After six years of litigation over plutonium moved to the site, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced on 31 August 2020 that the federal government agreed to pay the state $600 million. Wilson described this as "the single largest settlement in South Carolina's history". The federal government also agreed to remove the remaining 9.5 metric tons of plutonium stored at the site by 2037. At a town hall meeting at USC-Aiken on 20 August 2021, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster led a discussion on how to spend $525 million of that amount.

Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility

The unfinished MOX fuel fabrication facility was repurposed to construct the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) to produce at least 50 war reserve plutonium pits per year at the Savannah River Site, with surge capacity to meet NNSA's requirement of 80 pits annually following a two-site strategy with SRS producing no fewer than 50 pits and Los Alamos National Laboratory no fewer than 30 pits. The dismantlement and removal of equipment installed by the MOX project was completed in June 2024. The new facility is expected to open in 2032.

Tritium stockpile management

Tritium must be replenished continually because it decays exponentially at the rate of about 5.48% per year. The SRS tritium facilities manage the stockpile by recycling tritium from decommissioned warheads and extracting tritium from target rods. At first, these rods were irradiated at SRS, but later in commercial nuclear power reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Several production-scale methods for separation of tritium from other hydrogen isotopes were used at SRS. These included thermal diffusion (1957–1986), fractional absorption (1964–1968), cryogenic distillation (1967–2004) and, since 1994, thermal cycling absorption process (TCAP), a metal hydride based hydrogen isotope separation system.

Increasingly stringent safety and environmental requirements necessitated the replacement of facilities in operation since 1955 in order to maintain tritium production. The decision was taken in the early 1980s to build a new tritium handling facility, the Replacement Tritium Facility (RTF). The efficient TCAP process, invented in 1980s at SRS, was chosen in 1984 as the isotope separation system for the new facility. The modernization of the tritium facilities at SRS continued by essentially expanding RTF into the Tritium Extraction Facility (TEF) at a cost of $507 million (equivalent to $ million in ) Construction commenced in July 2000, and the TEF commenced operations in 2006. an idea that had already been rejected in 1952, was considered but never implemented.

One source of tritium is recycled nuclear weapons, many of which had to be dismantled due to post-Cold War era limitations treaties and agreements. Canisters of tritium are routinely returned to the SRS for processing. Each contains three gases: tritium, deuterium, and helium-3, the decay product of tritium and a neutron poison. A 400 W laser is used to cut a tiny hole through which the heated gases escape. The gas mixture is then passed over a metal hydride bed to harvest the helium-3. The tritium and deuterium are then separated using the thermal cycling absorption process (TCAP).

Another source of tritium was required, and DOE turned to the TVA. Tritium producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) were sent to the TVA for irradiation in its commercial Watts Bar Nuclear Plant and Sequoyah Nuclear Plant and sent subsequently for processing to the TEF at SRS.

File:Savannah River Site - Tritium Extraction Facility 001.jpg|Tritium Extraction Facility

File:Savannah River Site - Tritium Extraction Facility 002.jpg|Control room

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H Canyon nuclear materials disposition

H Canyon is the sole operational, industrial-scale, nuclear reprocessing facility in the United States. At the end of the Cold War, its mission shifted towards non proliferation and environmental remediation by processing and downblending weapon-grade nuclear materials, like high-enriched uranium or plutonium, for final disposition.

Spent fuel rods are dissolved in nitric acid and the chemical separation occurs in radiologically shielded facilities. It can also process spent nuclear fuel or "uranium liquid", also known as Target Residue Material, from third countries like for example, from the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada, as part of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative launched in 2004 by the National Nuclear Security Administration to expand efforts similar to the Cooperative Threat Reduction program beyond the former Soviet Union.

Waste management and disposition

F-area and H-area tank farms

The production and processing of strategic materials generated about of liquid radioactive waste that have been concentrated by evaporation to preserve tank space to a volume estimated, in November 2005, at . It is stored in 51 carbon-steel tanks, built between 1951 and 1981, and grouped into two tank farms in the F-area and H-area. Evaporation began at F Area in 1960, and H Area in 1963. Evaporator water, containing low levels of radioactivity, was discharged to the F and H Area seepage basins until in 1990, it was rerouted to the Saltstone Facility. , the tanks are being emptied and decommissioned under the regulatory oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The legacy nuclear waste consists of approximately of sludge, composed primarily of insoluble metal hydroxide solids that settled at the bottom of the tanks; and approximately of salt waste, which is composed of concentrated soluble salt solution (supernate) and crystallized saltcake. This waste is being treated and further reduced in volume in the Salt Waste Processing Facility. The most radioactive part is sent to the DWPF for vitrification, while the remaining salt residues are grouted and sent to the Saltstone Disposal Facility for disposal.

File:2F Evaporator (50327016872).jpg|2F Evaporator taken at F-Tank Farm

File:SDUs Z Area Aerials 3-28-23 (54439548358).jpg|Aerial view of the Saltstone Disposal facility

File:Commemorative paper weights made from the same type of grout that goes into the waste tanks for closure (8050487514).jpg|Commemorative paper weights made from the same type of grout that goes into the waste tanks

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Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF)

In the late 1960s, the SRNL began research to find a suitable solution for the management and disposal of liquid, highly radioactive waste generated at the SRP. The first waste was vitrified on a laboratory scale in 1972. By the mid-1970s, SRP began planning and designing America's first vitrification plant to immobilize the high-level radioactive waste stored in the SRP waste tank farms in borosilicate glass. After evaluating other methods, DOE choose vitrification for the long term management option for SRP waste in 1982 and pursued the development the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF).

DWPF is the only operating radioactive waste vitrification plant in the United States and the world's largest. In 1987, DOE projected the DWPF to cost an estimated $1.2 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) and to begin vitrifying waste in September 1989. By January 1992, costs had escalated up to $2.1 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) and the start of vitrification operations was scheduled for June 1994. Construction began on 4 November 1983, and the facility commenced operation in March 1996. The molten borosilicate glass is poured into canisters and solidifies, thereby immobilizing the waste for thousands of years. Each canister is in height and in diameter, with an empty weight of around . The process of filling a single canister typically requires one day, after which the total weight increases to approximately .

File:DWPF S Area Aerial 3-28-23 (54439669285).jpg|Aerial view of the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF)

File:DWPF Canisters (35074413643).jpg|Empty canisters.

File:DWPF Canisters (35842794646).jpg|Borosilicate glass is mixed with the waste, heated in a melter until molten, and poured into stainless steel canisters (in the floor here) to harden.

File:The Shielded Canister Transporter is used to move filled canisters to storage.png|The Shielded Canister Transporter is used to move filled canisters to storage

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Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF)

The Salt Waste Processing Facility separates and concentrates highly radioactive caesium-137, strontium-90, and selected actinides from the less radioactive salt solutions removed from the liquid legacy nuclear waste stored in large underground double walled storage tanks located in F-Area and H-Area tank farms. Operational since 2021, the SWPF use specific processes that have been developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory using annular centrifugal contactors. The concentrated waste is sent over, as a slurry, to the nearby DWPF for vitrification. The remainding decontaminated salt solution is sent to the nearby Saltstone Production Facility.

Saltstone Facility

The development of saltstone, a cement-based waste form for disposal of low-level radioactive salt waste, primarily sodium nitrate, started at SRS in the 1980s. The Saltstone Facility has been operational since 1990. It consists of the Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) and the Saltstone Disposal Facility (SDF). SPF receives and treats the salt solution from the DWPF to produce saltstone grout by mixing it with fly ash, furnace slag, and Portland cement. The saltstone grout form is pumped to large pre-constructed concrete structures at the SDF serving as final disposal units, known as Saltstone Disposal Units.

E Area Low-level Waste Facility (ELLWF)

The E Area Low-level Waste Facility (ELLWF) uses approximately for active disposal operations. Most low-level radioactive waste disposed at the ELLWF is generated at various SRS facilities, although ELLWF also receives waste from the U.S. Naval Reactors program. The waste is stored in vaults and trenches. By 2010, about of low level waste had been stored at the ELLWF, representing about 40 percent of capacity, although another was still available for development.

File:E Area Burial Ground Aerial 3-28-23 (54439472179).jpg| Aerial view of the E Area Burial Ground

File:E Area Burial Grounds Aerial 2-14-23 (54439650310).jpg| Disposition of low-level waste in the E Area

File:Savannah E Site (7507794862).jpg| Slit trenches for the disposition of low-level waste

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Effluent Treatment Facility (ETF)

The Effluent Treatment Facility (ETF) began operations in October 1988 to treat low-level radioactive waste water from the F and H Area Separations facilities.

Constructed between January 1987 and its operational startup in October 1988 at a cost of $55 million, the ETF was engineered to meet environmental regulations under RCRA and NPDES considering that Savannah River downstream from SRS is utilized for drinking water. Its design adapted existing wastewater treatment technologies for radioactive use. The facility has a design processing capacity of per day and a maximum permitted capacity of per day. In 2001, this unseparated plutonium-244 was recognized as a National Resource material. The total inventory is estimated to be of about 20 grams of plutonium-244 among the 65 targets. This valuable feedstock for producing new heavier actinides are economically irreplaceable. Since 2015, the DOE is funding a program to recover the plutonium-244 and other transplutonium elements.

SRS is also the main supplier of helium-3, an important isotope of helium due to its significant role in neutron detection applications, especially following the September 11 terrorist attacks, and fundamental research. Since 2001, annual demand has far exceeded annual production in the United States and Russia, leading to a reduction of the helium-3 stockpile worldwide. Helium-3 is a valuable commodity, and sold for between $2,000 and $2,500 per liter in 2020 (equivalent to $ to $ in ).

File:SRS at 60 -- Barricades (5228357270).jpg|Main gate in the 1950s (left) and 2010s (right). Originally, DuPont hired and trained individuals to serve on their own security force. From 1979, the WSI-SRS Team guarded the gates.

File:Protective Forces at Savannah River Site.jpg|Special response team and aviation operations elements of the SRS protective force, shown here conducting a training exercise in 2016.

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Notes

References

Sources

External links

Building Bombs, a 1991 documentary film by Atlanta filmmakers Mark Mori and Susan J. Robinson