My wife and I crossed the Savannah River last week into South Carolina for an unusual experience: a public tour of the sprawling 198,000-acre Savannah River Site.
Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing through the late 1980s, SRS’s five nuclear reactors churned out dozens of tons of highly radioactive plutonium and tritium to build thermonuclear weapons, or H-bombs, during the Cold War. The reactors are shut down now, and thousands of workers are engaged in cleaning up the massive pollution left over from making the bomb ingredients.
The vast majority of SRS’s acreage, though, was left in its natural state for security and safety reasons over the decades. Today, SRS harbors extensive forests, wetlands, swamps and other ecosystems that have remained essentially intact and protected since the 1950s along the Savannah River.
That has proved fortunate: The natural areas have made SRS one of the world’s most important sites for ecological research, especially for studies of herpetofauna, or reptiles and amphibians. The research is conducted under the auspices of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, an administrative unit of the University of Georgia.
UGA’s late famed ecologist Eugene Odum urged the government in the 1950s to create the lab at SRS to study the effects of radiation on the environment. Hundreds of ecological studies have been carried out at SREL.
During our tour of SRS last week, our first stop was at SREL, where retired UGA herpetologist Whit Gibbons briefed us on research conducted there over the years on frogs, salamanders, snakes, turtles and alligators.
SREL researchers, he noted, have captured, marked, and released more than 1 million individuals of 100 species of reptiles and amphibians on SRS. These captures represent more species of reptiles and amphibians than have been found on any other public land area in the United States, Gibbons noted. He and fellow staff members brought some live specimens from SRS to show us: marbled salamander, tiger salamander, legless lizard, gopher tortoise, snapping turtle, baby alligators, rat snake, scarlet king snake, canebrake rattlesnake and others.
Gibbons noted that the herpetology research at SREL has taken on even more importance in recent years as researchers try to determine why many frog and salamander species are declining at alarming rates around the world.
For more about SREL’s herp research, visit: www.uga.edu/srelherp.
In the sky: The Perseid meteor shower will be visible all next week and reaches a peak of 50 meteors per hour on Friday night, said David Dundee, astronomer with Tellus Science Museum. Look to the southeast from 2 a.m. until dawn. The moon's light may interfere with the view of fainter meteors.
The moon is first quarter today -- rising out of the east around lunch time and setting in the west around midnight. Mars is low in the east about three hours before sunrise. Jupiter rises out of the east before midnight. Saturn is low in the west at dark and sets in the west before midnight.
Savannah River Site
Encompasses 310 square miles along the Savannah River in South Carolina near Aiken. Created in 1950 by the former Atomic Energy Commission to produce radioactive plutonium and tritium for thermonuclear weapons, or H-bombs. Five nuclear reactors were built on the site to produce the material.
The Department of Energy is offering a limited number of free public tours of SRS through the end of the year. All visitors must be U.S. citizens and 18 or older. Visitors must register in advance online and must have two forms of identification, including a picture ID. No cell phones, cameras or similar electronic devices allowed on tours.
All tours begin and end at the Center for Hydrogen Research, 301 Gateway Drive, Aiken, S.C., 29803. For information, schedules and registration, visit: http://www5.hanford.gov/srstours/?tour=Home. More information also available from SRS personnel at 803-952-8467.
About the Author
