Savannah River Site - History

History

• 1950-1951: The federal government asked E.I. DuPont to build and operate a nuclear facility near the Savannah River in South Carolina. The company had expertise in nuclear operations, having designed and built the plutonium production complex at the Hanford site for the Manhattan Project during World War II. A large portion of farmland, the towns of Ellenton and Dunbarton, and several other communities including Meyers Mill, Leigh, Robbins, and Hawthorne were bought under eminent domain, and the site of 310 square miles (800 km2) became the Savannah River Site, managed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Biologists from the University of Georgia began ecological studies of local plants and animals, and construction began.

• 1952-1954: Production of heavy water for the site reactors began and reactors R, P, L and K went critical. The first irradiated fuel was discharged. F Canyon, the world's first operational full-scale PUREX separation plant, began radioactive operations on November 4, 1954. PUREX (Plutonium and Uranium EXtraction) extracted plutonium and uranium products from materials irradiated in the reactors.

• 1955-1956: C Reactor went critical. The first plutonium shipment left the site. H Canyon, a chemical separation facility, began radioactive operations. Construction of the basic plant was completed.

• 1956: The neutrino was discovered by Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan using the flux from P Reactor. Reines was awarded the 1995 Physics Nobel Prize; Cowan had already died.

• 1961: University of Georgia professor Eugene Odum founded the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory to study the effects of radiation upon organisms at the site.

• 1962-1964: The Heavy Water Components Test Reactor (HWCTR) was tested.

• 1963-1971: The Receiving Basin for Offsite Fuels (RBOF) received the first shipment of off-site spent nuclear fuel. L Reactor was shut down for upgrades. R Reactor was shut down. K Reactor became the first reactor to be controlled by computer.

• 1972: The site was designated as a National Environmental Research Park.

1981-1983: An environmental cleanup program began. M Area settling basin cleanup began under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The heavy water rework facility was closed. Construction of the defense waste processing facility began.

• 1985-1987: HB Line began producing plutonium-238 for NASA's deep space exploration program. L Reactor restarted and C Reactor shut down. A groundwater remediation system is constructed in M Area. Construction of Saltstone and of the Replacement Tritium Facility began. DuPont notified DOE that it would not continue to operate and manage the site.

• 1988-1989: K, L, and P Reactors were shut down. An effluent treatment facility began treating low-level radioactive wastewater from F and H Area separations facilities. The site was included on the National Priority List and became regulated by the EPA. Westinghouse Savannah River Company assumed management and operation of site facilities.

• 1990-1993: Construction of a cooling tower for K Reactor began. Saltstone began operation. The mixed waste management facility was the first site facility to be closed and certified under the provisions of RCRA. L Reactor and M Area settling basin were shut down. With the end of the Cold War, production of nuclear materials for weapons use ceased. The cooling tower was connected to the K Reactor, and the reactor operated briefly for the last time. The Secretary of Energy announced the phase-out of all uranium processing. Non-radioactive operations began at the Replacement Tritium Facility and the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). K Reactor was placed in cold standby condition. Construction began on the Consolidated Incineration Facility. The Workforce Transition and Community Assistance began.

• 1994-1997: The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board was established. DWPF introduced radioactive material into the vitrification process. K Reactor was shut down. F Canyon restarted and began stabilizing nuclear materials. The first high-level radioactive waste tanks were closed.

• 1998-2000: Savannah River Site was selected as the site of three new plutonium facilities for: a MOX fuel fabrication; pit disassembly and conversion; and plutonium immobilization. The K Reactor building was converted to a storage facility. WSRC earned the DOE's top safety performance honor of Star Status.

• 2001: The first shipment of transuranic waste was sent to the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Project in New Mexico. DWPF completed production of four million pounds of environmentally acceptable glassified waste.

• 2002:
  • The F Canyon and FB Line facilities completed their last production run. The Savannah River Technology Center participated in a study of using a nuclear power reactor to produce hydrogen from water.
  • Scientists report finding a new species of radiation-resistant extremophiles inside one of the tanks. It was named kineococcus radiotolerans.

• 2003: In January, Westinghouse Savannah River Company completed transferring the last of F Canyon’s radioactive material to H Tank Farm. DWPF began radioactive operations with its second melter, installed during a shutdown. The last depleted uranium metal was shipped from M Area for disposition at Envirocare of Utah. The last unit of spent nuclear fuel from RBOF was shipped across the site to L Reactor in preparation for RBOF's deactivation.

• 2004: The site shipped its 10,000th drum of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a DOE facility in New Mexico, 12 years ahead of schedule. In a visit, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham designated the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), one of 12 DOE national laboratories. Two prototype bomb disposal robots developed by SRNL were deployed for military use in Iraq.

• 2005: The Tritium Extraction Facility (TEF) was completed for the purpose of extracting tritium from materials irradiated in the Tennessee Valley Authority's commercial nuclear reactors. Savannah River Site's first shipment of neptunium oxide arrived at the Argonne West Laboratory in Idaho. This was the last of the nation's neptunium inventory, and the last of the materials to be stabilized to satisfy commitments for stabilizing nuclear materials. F Canyon was the first major nuclear facility at the site to be suspended and deactivated. Low-enriched uranium (LEU) from the site was used by a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power reactor to generate electricity. The tritium facilities modernization and consolidation project completed start-up and replaced the gas purification and processing that took place in 232-H. WSRC began multi-stage layoffs of permanent employees.

• 2006: Design work took place and is ongoing for the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), a facility designed to process radioactive liquid waste stored in underground storage tanks at the site. The SWPF project work is performed by a group anchored by Parsons Corporation. Work continued on design of the MOX fuel fabrication facility by a company now known as Shaw AREVA MOX Services.

• 2007: On August 1, 2007, construction officially began on the $4.86 billion MOX facility. The current deadline for the completion of construction is 2014. Following startup testing, the facility would begin operations in 2016 with a disposition rate of up to 3.5 tons of plutonium oxide each year. The mission is supposed to end in 2035, although it could be extended to 2038.