A Legacy: Savannah River Site

By Colin Demarest | The Aiken Standard

It started with a letter. A request.

A bid to combat the Soviet Union at a time of burgeoning international rivalry and under an escalating threat of doomsday arsenals.

In 1950, President Harry Truman requested the design and construction expertise of DuPont for a new atomic project – what was to become the Savannah River Plant, a clandestine Cold War complex south of Aiken, bounded by its snaking namesake river.

A November 1950 headline in the Aiken Standard and Review proclaimed: “AEC To Construct Huge Plant Near Aiken.” The AEC, shorthand for Atomic Energy Commission, from which contemporary agencies sprung, was established after World War II to manage the development and application of nuclear science and technology.

“250 Thousand Acres Selected For Location,” stated another Aiken Standard and Review headline, abutting a notice that a map was not available. Modern maps show the site as a blot, an industrial island in a bucolic sea, on South Carolina’s western flank.

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