Fire briefly triggers emergency at South Carolina lab on former nuclear weapons site

A fire at a national lab in South Carolina that is in a complex where key parts for nuclear bombs were once made triggered an emergency declaration Wednesday that shut down incoming traffic and restricted air and rail service in the area.

The fire at the Savannah River National Laboratory on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site was extinguished by Wednesday night and the site returned to normal operations. No detectable levels of contamination were found, according to a Savannah River Site statement.

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 lab is in its northwest corner, near the edge of the site.

The site was opened in the early 1950s as the Cold War was heating up. Today it is used for environmental stewardship and cleanup, along with nuclear waste management and disposition of nuclear materials, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The lab currently does experiments with nuclear materials and also does processing work with radioactive material, including operating a facility for radioisotope recovery from used nuclear fuel, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Lyman said it is reassuring that officials said there has been no off-site contamination, noting that there is a buffer zone between most of the facilities and the public areas.

But if you have a fire where there is radioactive material, “you need to take extreme precautions because of the potential dispersal of that material and the potential for contamination, potential for the public to be exposed,” he said.

The emergency declaration put out Wednesday is the second-highest of three categories of emergencies at the site and indicates “something more serious has occurred,” according to the site’s community preparedness information. The emergency declaration ended Wednesday night after the fire was extinguished.