What is SRS? Learn about the site's impact on Aiken County's past, shapes the future. (2024)

Other than taking a public tour, the general public can't go behind the fences of the Savannah River Site but they can visit the Savannah River Site Museum to a get a glimpse of what happens at there.

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Admission is free. The museum is located at 224 Laurens St. S.E. in the former Dibble Library building.

The museum tells thestory of the people who had to uproot themselves, their children and sometimes their homes to make way for the 310-square-mile site located south of Aiken.

The museum also tells the story of the site's work with NASA and the space program.

The site produced the plutonium 238 used to power several generations of NASA probes including both Voyagers,Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini and the New Horizons.

There are also exhibits on radiation and the work of the Savannah River Ecology Lab.

The museum featuers an example of a fallout shelter— there is an actual fallout shelter in the parkway one block north near the intersection of Park Avenue and Laurens Street — and videos about the importance of safety and security during the early days of the site and the Cold War.

Walt Joseph, a 39-year employee of the Savannah River Site, founded the museum and SRS Heritage Foundation — the nonprofit foundation that supports the museum — in 2015.

Joseph had learned about the Department of Energy's plan to remove buildings from the site without a clear plan on how to preserve the materials inside those buildings and the stories that went with them.

"If we’re ever going to have anything that tells the story of SRS, we’re going to need to take some steps to ensure that that material is saved," Joseph said he told a friend. "We’re going to have to have something to talk about."

Aiken County donated the Dibble Library as a location for the museum in 2015.

Towns relocated

The Savannah River Site was created in 1950. People living in the communities ofEllenton, Dunbarton, Skinface, Bush, Hawthorne, Leigh, Greenland, Robbins, Hattiesville, Meyers Mill and Donora communities— roughly 6,000 people— were moved to make way for the nuclear plant.

The site currently occupies 310 square miles in Aiken, Barnwell and Bamberg counties.

Current missions

Current missions at the site include the production of tritium, the cleanup of nuclear waste generated during the Cold War and the disposition of plutonium and spent nuclear fuel stored at the site. The cleanup of the nuclear waste is expected to be completed by 2037.

Future mission

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to begin the production of plutonium pits in the mid-2030s. Training of employees and construction of facilities is underway.

Savannah River National Lab

The Savannah River National Lab plans to operate the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative on the USC Aiken campus and lease space in a mixed-use building planned for downtown Aiken. The national lab was split from the rest of the site after the end of the Cold War.