A construction company has broken ground on an $11 million procurement warehouse for the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Program (SRPPF).
Hensel Phelps, the general contractor for the facility, said in its June 12 news release that the warehouse will be 22,000 square feet and is slated for completion in March 2027. The warehouse will provide procurement and logistics for SRPPF, with a long-term goal of supporting plutonium pit production at the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
“Hensel Phelps is constructing the SRPPF warehouse as a non-radiological procurement support facility that provides critical procurement and logistics functions for plutonium processing and the production of plutonium pits at the site,” the contractor said in the release. This facility supports a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plan to produce at least 80 plutonium pits per year, the company said.
The warehouse is a collaborative effort between Hensel Phelps, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and NNSA, a semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy.
The NNSA office at Savannah River did not immediately respond to questions.
Colorado-based Hensel Phelps is one of the larger general contractors in the United States and has done much work for commercial and government clients, including a project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to its web site.