Emergency declared after fire and radiological release at Savannah River nuclear site
A site area emergency has been declared at a federal nuclear complex in South Carolina after a fire and a reported radiological release at a laboratory, according to officials and local media. The fire has been extinguished.
Savannah River Site officials declared the emergency at 5:39 p.m. Wednesday after a fire was reported in a single room at the Savannah River National Laboratory, near Aiken, according to the site and local station WRDW.
Site officials told WRDW there had been “an unfiltered ground-level radiological release.” They said no contamination had been reported outside the affected facility and that there was no indication of consequences beyond the site’s boundaries.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a temporary flight restriction, citing a U.S. government “nuclear incident” at the site.
Employees in the laboratory area, known as Area A, sheltered in place behind barricades for about 30 minutes. They were later allowed to leave, but others were not allowed to enter, WRDW reported.
Other employees who were not involved in the emergency response or shutdown operations were sheltered as a precaution, site officials said. Entrances were closed to incoming traffic, and rail, river and air traffic in the vicinity were restricted.
The cause of the fire, the nature and amount of material released, and whether anyone was injured were not immediately known.
The Savannah River Site covers about 310 square miles along the South Carolina-Georgia border. Built in the 1950s, it produced plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Its work now includes nuclear materials management, environmental cleanup and research.
