Fire Extinguished at Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina After Emergency Declared

A fire broke out Wednesday inside the Savannah River National Laboratory located at the Savannah River Site in the U.S. state of South Carolina, prompting an emergency declaration, road closures and measures affecting air and rail traffic in the vicinity.

The emergency was declared at 5:39 p.m., according to a statement issued by the Savannah River Site, before the fire was extinguished.

The statement said the site's teams recorded no contamination outside the affected facility, and that employees who were in the affected areas and not involved in firefighting were sheltered in safe locations.

The laboratory is located in the northwestern corner of the Savannah River Site, a complex overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Savannah River Site is a large facility that the federal government once used to produce materials used in making nuclear weapons, chiefly tritium and plutonium-239.

The site opened in the early 1950s to manufacture plutonium cores needed to make the hearts of nuclear bombs at the start of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the site's current use is focused on environmental stewardship and cleanup, nuclear waste management, and handling and disposal of nuclear materials.