The Savannah River Plant (SRP) facilities were built in the 1950s to produce materials used in the fabrication of nuclear weapons, primarily tritium and plutonium-239, 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. Production of nuclear materials for military use ceased in 1988.
DuPont was awarded the contract to manage and operate the plant. The site selected was on the Savannah River in Aiken and Barnwell Counties, South Carolina, about southeast of Augusta, Georgia. The choice was based on its being inland, with proximity to cooling water, highway and railroad access, electric power, and stable geology. The government eventually acquired 1,706 tracts totaling , including the entire small towns of Dunbarton and Ellenton. Until 1960, the SRP was protected by anti-aircraft guns.
In addition to producing plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons, the SRP also produced transuranic elements for research and space exploration. In 1956, Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines conducted an experiment at SRP that proved the existence of the neutrino, for which Reines was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics. DuPont monitored the environmental impact of the SRP. This stewardship evolved into full-fledged research programs that monitored and continued to explore the impact of the site on the environmental health of the surrounding ecosystems, turning SRP into an early center of ecological activity in the United States.
Establishment and construction Background On 1 January 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) assumed responsibility for the research and production facilities the Army's Manhattan Project had created during World War II. The AEC's gaseous diffusion plants at Oak Ridge produced enriched uranium and its production reactors at the Hanford Site irradiated uranium to breed plutonium for nuclear weapons. In response to the detonation of the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb on 29 August 1949, the AEC embarked on an expansion program. On 31 January 1950, President Harry S. Truman directed the AEC to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the development of the hydrogen bomb.
An increase in plutonium production required more reactors. There were concerns about the vulnerability of the Hanford Site to Soviet bombers, but considerations of cost led to the idea of a second plutonium production site being rejected in 1947 and 1948. Now, the AEC faced a new challenge: producing large quantities of tritium, which was believed to be required by the hydrogen bomb. Tritium was produced by the irradiation of lithium-6. It has a half-life of 12.3 years, so about 5.6 percent decays in a given year, requiring a continuous replenishment process, whereas plutonium-239 has a half-life of 25,000 years, so the stockpile is only meaningfully reduced by weapons tests, accidents or use in warfare.
The Hanford reactors used nuclear graphite as a neutron moderator, even though heavy water offered superior neutron moderation properties. Heavy water also had the advantage of being both a moderator and a coolant. This made it a theoretically ideal choice for production reactors, but the scarcity of heavy water during World War II made its large-scale use impractical, leaving graphite as the only viable option, despite its limitations. At a meeting on 30 March 1950, Walter Zinn from the Argonne National Laboratory argued that reactors moderated and cooled with heavy water would be more suitable for tritium production, although they could produce plutonium as well. By using heavy water as a moderator, they could be fueled with natural rather than enriched uranium. The AEC's director of production, Walter J. Williams, suggested that what was required was a new production site, a new site office, and a new major contractor. For the contractor, the AEC Commissioners turned to DuPont.
DuPont had expertise in nuclear engineering operations, having designed and built the plutonium production complex at the Hanford Site and the X-10 graphite reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It had left Hanford at its own request in September 1946, turning it over to General Electric, but had continued to provide assistance to the AEC. Since 1948, the president of the company had been Crawford Greenewalt, who had been DuPont's man at Hanford during the war. The AEC formally requested that DuPont take the assignment on 12 June 1950. Greenewalt asked for a personal letter from Truman endorsing the urgency and importance of the project, which Truman provided on 25 July. The contract, which was signed on 30 September 1953, was a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, with the fee set at one dollar.
Site selection
Search
The contract with DuPont specified that it was in charge of all aspects of the project, including site selection. The AEC did have some input into the process. The AEC Military Liaison Committee obtained a map showing defense zones. The preferred defense zone was the First Defense Zone, which was beyond the range of Soviet bombers. It consisted mostly of the southeastern states, but excluded Florida and a strip along the coastline. The other factor which weighed heavily on the AEC was that while an isolated location with a low population density was preferred for safety and security reasons, the commissioners did not want it to be too isolated. The wartime construction of government towns at Richland, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos had left the AEC with communities it had to administer and was now eager to divest them. If yet another government town was indeed required, then DuPont would have to administer it.
DuPont employed a version of the criteria that it used for chemical plants. The United States Army Corps of Engineers was asked to identify government-owned reserves of in the First Defense Zone in areas that were isolated but within or so of a town or towns with a population of 25,000 to 50,000. This yielded 105 potential sites. A key criterion was the availability of cooling water: the two reactors would each require about . This reduced the number of potential sites to 84, and applying further criteria brought it down to 17. Secondary criteria included highway and railroad access, at least 125,000 kW of electric power, and stable geology with a low probability of earthquakes.
With the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States moved to a war economy, and the AEC sought to expand its production facilities. In September, the AEC increased the number of new reactors to be built to five, with the possibility of a sixth, power-generating, reactor. It calculated that 1,800 MW was required to create enough tritium for the hydrogen bomb program, and since each of the Savannah River Reactors was rated at 300 MW, six would be required. This increased the cooling water requirement to , and cut the number of suitable sites to just five. Each of the six production reactors would need a separation plant, so this meant twelve facilities, each of which would occupy about . The separation plants had to be at least apart and the reactors at least from any other plant. For safety and security, the whole area had to be surrounded by a exclusion zone from which any inhabitants would have to be removed. This increased the desired size of the site to about .
Decision In October, the preferred region criterion was relaxed in the hope of saving by using colder water. The search was expanded to the Second Defense Zone, covering much of the northeastern, central, and southwestern United States, to include areas with lower water temperatures and humidity. Site inspections reduced the final candidates down to four, two of which were in the First Defense Zone: Site Number 5 – on the Savannah River in Aiken and Barnwell Counties South Carolina, about southeast of Augusta, Georgia; Site Number 125 – on the Red River in Fannin and Lamar Counties in Texas and Bryan and Choctaw Counties in Oklahoma, about northeast of Dallas, Texas; Site Number 59 – on the Wabash River in Crawford and Clark Counties in Illinois and Sullivan County in Indiana, about southeast of Terre Haute, Indiana; and Site Number 205 – on the shores of Lake Superior in Bayfield and Douglas Counties in Wisconsin, about southeast of Duluth, Minnesota.
Site Number 5 emerged as DuPont's preferred location. The Savannah River had better water quality than the Red River, which would save on the cost of expensive water purification facilities. The Wabash had colder water, but Site Number 59 was in prime farm land, whereas Site Number 5 was in land considered marginal for agriculture. During site inspection, the survey team also visited, and was impressed by, the Clarks Hill Dam, which was then under construction. Site Number 205 had benefits, but these were not considered sufficient to select a site outside the preferred defense zone.
The AEC was informed of DuPont's choice on 10 November 1950, and the findings of the site survey were presented to the AEC Site Review Committee on 20 November. The Site Review Committee had been established by the AEC in August to review DuPont's findings, and was headed by Leif Sverdrup, who had been a Corps of Engineers officer in the Southwest Pacific Area during World War II.
Two days later, seven members of the DuPont site survey team met with the AEC commissioners in Washington, D.C. The commissioners learned that DuPont was recommending the acquisition of instead of . The additional land provided river frontage as a natural boundary, secured access to the water supply, and provided flexibility in the location of pumping stations. The commissioners were unhappy that the proposed boundary involved the removal of the small towns of Dunbarton, Ellenton, Jackson and Snelling. Commissioners Henry D. Smyth and T. Keith Glennan inspected the site by air and car on 26 November, and later that day the commissioners approved the acquisition.
An announcement was issued on 28 November, in which the site was officially named the "Savannah River Plant" (SRP). Commissioner Sumner Pike was frank about the prospects of developing the hydrogen bomb, which he described as "somewhere between the possible and the probable". Doubts about the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb persisted until the Operation Greenhouse nuclear tests in April and May 1951. Land acquisition Haggling over the SRP boundaries continued into December. By moving the manufacturing area slightly, the towns of Jackson and Snelling were saved, but Dunbarton and Ellenton remained within the boundary. The Supplemental Appropriation Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-843 [H. R. 9526]), approved on September 27, 1950, increased the AEC budget by $250,000,000 () to acquire land for a plant to manufacture radioactive products. Responsibility for land acquisition was delegated to the South Atlantic Division of the Corps of Engineers.
On 28 December, the Corps of Engineers was told to proceed with the land acquisition, although the precise boundaries of the site were not finalized until 11 January 1951. The surveyors commenced compiling an accurate map of the site and its ownership. A team of 13 appraisers was assembled, all with appraisal experience in South Carolina. The appraisers valued the property, and if the owner accepted the valuation, then a contract was signed. If not, then the property was condemned in the federal district court. The money was deposited with the court, and the owner could ask for up to 80 to 90 percent as credit against the final award. Property that was required immediately was obtained under a federal declaration of taking.