A fire at the Savannah River National Laboratory, located at the US Department of Energy’s nuclear complex in South Carolina, has prompted authorities to declare a state of emergency.
Reuters reported that an employee was lightly injured in the incident and taken to hospital for treatment. The cause of the fire has not yet been announced.
The fire was contained by Wednesday evening local time, and operations at the complex returned to normal, according to the Associated Press.
The Savannah River Complex was built in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, to produce materials needed for nuclear weapons, including plutonium-239 and tritium. The complex is still involved in the management of nuclear materials, radioactive waste, and tritium-related activities.
Savannah River National Laboratory is located in the northwest part of the complex and, in addition to nuclear research, also operates in the field of processing radioactive materials and recovering isotopes from spent nuclear fuel.
