Cleaning Up a Legacy of Hazards

They called it the Cold War. But the nuclear weapons race between the United States and the Soviet Union burned red hot for nearly four decades. During the arms buildup, five Savannah River Site reactors produced the radioactive materials that armed thousands of long-range missiles. In fact, between 1953 and 1988, SRS refined nearly 36 tonnes of plutonium along with tritium. As a result, millions of tonnes of waste products were buried—and remain—on SRS property.

Today, there are 515 legacy waste sites at SRS. One location alone contains more than 450,000 kilograms of toxic solvents. Across the facility, Bechtel engineers confront each site as a unique situation that requires a unique solution.

“These contaminants could pose a threat to the air and groundwater,” says Michael Graham, area project manager of soil and groundwater projects. “Our job is to investigate every site and lay out a plan to remediate them according to Environmental Protection Agency regulations. That could mean treating the wastes, digging them up and shipping them offsite, or capping them and leaving them in place.”

Since beginning the project, Bechtel has successfully completed cleanup work on 340 Savannah River Site locations.