LISTEN: On Monday, the Department of Energy approved full-scale construction at the Savannah River Site near Augusta to produce war reserve plutonium pits. GPB’s Jillian Magtoto reports.
Only a small handful of the public will likely ever get to see the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) in Aiken, S.C. near Augusta. Here lies the future manufacturing site for most of the nation’s plutonium pits, or the triggers for nuclear weapons.
But that plant never came to fruition. In 2018, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) decided a different fate for it. Against the original intent of the plant, the NNSA deemed that the same building would instead develop plutonium pits…