DuPont Administration Building, Savannah River Plant Harry Truman signed the Savannah River Plant into existence in 1950. Its mission : to produce plutonium and tritium for America’s H-bomb program. The prime contractor was DuPont, which cleared 312 square miles and moved four communities to build five plutonium reactors, a tritium facility, two chemicals-separations plants, a heavy-water plant, high-level waste tanks, a low-level radiation dump, a Navy submarine reactor fuels materials facility (1986), and, by 1989, a defense waste-processing plant for turning high-level nuclear waste into glass logs. The plant employs 15,000 people.