A fire at a national laboratory in South Carolina, located in a complex where key parts for nuclear bombs were once manufactured, triggered an emergency declaration Wednesday that halted incoming traffic and restricted air and rail service in the region.
The Savannah River National Laboratory fire, at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, was extinguished Wednesday evening and the site resumed normal operations. No detectable levels of contamination were found, according to a statement from the Savannah River site.
The Savannah River Site is a massive complex where the federal government once produced materials used in nuclear weapons, primarily tritium and plutonium-239. The laboratory is in the northwest corner, near the boundary of the site.
The site was opened in the early 1950s as the Cold War intensified. Today, it is used for environmental management and cleanup, as well as nuclear waste management and nuclear material disposal, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The laboratory currently conducts experiments with nuclear materials and also does radioactive material processing work, including operating a facility to recover radioisotopes from spent nuclear fuel, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear energy safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Lyman said it was reassuring that officials said there had been no off-site contamination, noting that there is a buffer between most facilities and public spaces.
But if you have a fire in which radioactive materials are present, “you have to take extreme precautions because of the potential dispersion of those materials and the potential for contamination, and the risk of public exposure,” he said.
The emergency declaration issued Wednesday is the second highest of three emergency categories at the site and indicates that “something more serious has happened,” according to the site’s community preparedness information. The emergency declaration ended Wednesday evening after the fire was extinguished.
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