Snelling, 150 miles from Charlotte, is a Barnwell County town ofabout 500 people. Right next door is the Department of Energy'sSavannah River Site, a major player in national defense work andthe only source for tritium, an important element for makingnuclear weapons.
In the early 1970s, a consortium of companies chose Snelling asthe site for the nation's first plant to reprocess used nuclearfuel. The $360 million Barnwell Nuclear Fuels Plant was expected toprovide much-needed jobs in the rural community. Although 300people were employed in 1977 at the 200- acre site on the eve ofits official start-up, the plant never operated.
That was the year president Jimmy Carter banned commercialnuclear fuel reprocessing to help curb the spread of plutonium, abyproduct of reprocessing and the explosive component in nuclearbombs.
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