fire at the American nuclear laboratory; A state of emergency has been declared.
A fire at the Savannah River National Laboratory, located at the US Department of Energy's giant nuclear complex in South Carolina, has forced officials to declare a state of emergency.
According to the Reuters news agency, a worker from this complex was partially injured and was taken to the hospital.
The cause of this fire has not yet been released.
The Associated Press reported that the fire was extinguished by Wednesday evening local time and the activity of the complex returned to normal.
The Savannah River complex, built in the 1950s and at the height of the Cold War to produce key materials for nuclear weapons, including plutonium-239 and tritium, is still considered one of the main pillars of the American nuclear weapons complex and is active in the field of nuclear material management, its launch waste and tritium operation. Savannah River National Laboratory is located in the northwest corner of this 310-square-mile complex, and in addition to nuclear research, it is also responsible for processing radioactive materials and recovering isotopes from spent nuclear fuel.