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SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, S.C. (AP) -- The Savannah River Site is celebrating a new power plant that will provide half the power the site needs by burning wood chips and other debris from local manufacturing plants that would have been thrown away.

Massachusetts company Ameresco is being paid nearly $800 million in the nation's largest contract for renewable energy to build the plant at the site.

Ameresco guaranteed the U.S. government that it will save $34 million a year over the 19-year contract.

The new biomass plant will replace oil and coal burning plants.at the Savannah River Site, which used to make nuclear bombs, but now makes fuel for nuclear plants.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)