Press Release

SRS Could Get Nuclear Trigger Production Work

Aiken- the Savannah River Site could get work to make the triggers for the nation's nuclear weapons.

Not long ago, Savannah River Site was chosen to take apart "pits," for the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons. The radioactive plutonium from the old pits is used to product mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel for nuclear-power plants.

That worries the nuclear weapons activists who watch over the nuclear weapons site.

"It's something that's never been done at the site, this plutonium machining, and machining of plutonium is not an easy thing." Don Moniak, an Aiken resident and community organizer for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, said of pit production.

Plutonium machining shapes the raw metal into a component for a nuclear weapon.