From the 1950s to the 1990s, the manufacture of nuclear weapons was a high priority item in the United States. The nation depended heavily on an adequate supply of atomic and hydrogen bombs as its ultimate defense against enemy attack. As a result, the government had established 17 major plants in 12 states to produce the materials needed for nuclear weapons.

Five of these plants were built along the Savannah River near Aiken, South Carolina. The Savannah River Site (SRS) is about 20 mi (32 km) southeast of Augusta, Georgia, and 150 mi (242 km) upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. The five reactors sit on a 310 mi² (803 km²) site that also holds 34 million gal (129 million l) of high-level radioactive wastes.

The SRS reactors were originally used to produce plutonium fuel used in nuclear weapons. In recent years, they have been converted to the production of tritium gas, an important component...