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 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Augusta, Georgia. The site was built during the 1950s to produce plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons. It covers 310 square miles (800 km2) 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 (SRMC). 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 20 miles (32 km) 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. The contract to build and operate the plant was given to DuPont. The contract, which was signed on 30 September 1953, was a cost-plus-fixed-fee one, with the fee set at one dollar. Construction of the first reactor at the Savannah River Plant, R Reactor, was begun in June 1951, and was completed in July 1953, twenty-five months later. R Reactor became operational in December 1953. P, L, and K Reactors followed in February, July and October 1954, respectively, and the fifth reactor, C Reactor, went critical in February 1955. The first irradiated fuel was discharged, from R Reactor, in March 1955. As the operators became more familiar with the reactors, they found that the power levels could be increased. C Reactor was built with twelve heat exchangers, but the others had only six due to limited supplies of heavy water and a shortage of heat exchangers. In 1956, the number of heat exchangers was increased to twelve on all five reactors, and the power output was increased from 378 MW to 2,250 MW. This in turn meant that the cooling water, which was discharged back into the Savannah River, was hotter. A 2,600-acre (1,100 ha) cooling pond, known as the P and R (or Par) Pond, was constructed in 1958 to allow water to cool before being discharged. P and R Reactors also drew on Par Pond for cooling water, thereby saving pumping costs and making more river water available to the other reactors. Production of plutonium for defense programs ceased in 1988, and by the end of the year all five reactors had been shut down.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
