Rick Compton

🚨🇺🇸 BREAKING: Fire at the Savannah River nuclear lab triggered an "unfiltered ground-level radiological release" and a shelter-in-place order The emergency dispatch says the fire was contained to one room at Savannah River National Laboratory, inside the Energy Department's 310-square-mile weapons complex in South Carolina, and that radioactive material escaped at ground level without passing through the building's filters. Workers in Area A were held behind barricades for about half an hour after 5 p.m., then let out while nobody else was allowed in, and both the dispatch and the site's statement say there's no sign of anything reaching beyond the fence. No cause has been given. Savannah River is where America's tritium for nuclear warheads gets handled and where excess plutonium and decades of weapons waste are processed, so "one room" at this site means something different than it would anywhere else. The site runs a radiological-release drill every year, which is why the shelter order came fast, but the questions now belong to the Energy Department: what burned, what got out, how much, and whether the monitors at the boundary agree with the press release. Source: WRDW, @TheInsiderPaper / Writer: Daniel