An emergency declaration was issued Wednesday afternoon following a fire inside a laboratory at the Savannah River Site, a key Department of Energy nuclear facility located near Aiken, South Carolina.
The Site Area Emergency was declared just after 5:00 p.m. at the Savannah River National Laboratory and remained in effect for several hours before being terminated just before 10:00 p.m., according to site officials. During the incident, temporary restrictions were placed on rail, river, and air traffic surrounding the area, while Highway 125 remained open to the public.
Officials confirmed that the fire was successfully extinguished and that protective actions have since been lifted, with site barricades reopening. Radiological surveys conducted following the incident indicated no detectable levels of contamination. One worker sustained minor injuries and was transported to a hospital for treatment.
SRS directed response efforts and notified appropriate state and local government agencies. Regular scheduling resumed as oncoming shift workers and employees were instructed to report to work as scheduled on Thursday, October 29.
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted that while the absence of off-site contamination is reassuring—aided by a buffer zone separating facilities from public areas—any fire involving radioactive material demands extreme precautions due to potential dispersal, contamination, and public exposure risks.
The Savannah River Site serves as a major U.S. Department of Energy industrial complex overseeing environmental stewardship, cleanup, nuclear waste management, and the disposition of nuclear materials. Established in the 1950s, the facility historically produced materials for nuclear weapons, including tritium and plutonium-239, utilizing five reactors and two chemical separation plants known as canyons to process irradiated fuel and target assemblies between 1953 and 1988.
