The Pure Savannah

For the $260 million hydrogen bomb plant that will soon be built in South Carolina, the people of that region can thank--or blame--the Savannah River. The Atomic Energy Commission admitted last week that it had studied rivers across the U.S. before finally picking the Savannah as the most suitable.

Large nuclear reactors need vast quantities of cooling water, and it must be water of a very special sort. The plutonium plant at Hanford, Wash. was built there because of the Columbia River, but Columbia water did not prove entirely satisfactory. Though clear and cold and plentiful, it contains a large amount of dissolved solids, some of which become radioactive when they are carried through the reactors.

The fish of the Columbia have been affected by this phenomenon. Although the radioactive stuff does not seem to hurt them much, they become radioactive enough to "take their own pictures." When a "hot" fish caught near Hanford is laid overnight on a photographic plate, it leaves an impression showing its bones, gills and head glands where the radioactivity has concentrated.

Such fish are not very dangerous. According to the AEC, a man would have to live on them for years before he felt ill effects. Still, the AEC has played safe and forbidden fishing for a considerable distance downstream from Hanford.

Radioactive fish are not the main problem; water free of dissolved solids is essential for other reasons too. In its search for the best place for its new plant, the AEC narrowed its choice to a site on the Red River near Paris, Texas and the site on the Savannah. The two rivers are equally muddy, but silt can be removed by a comparatively cheap filtering process. The Red River, however, carries a large amount of dissolved material which would have to be removed by a chemical process costing $40 million a year. The Savannah gets its water from a region of heavy rainfall where most soluble minerals have leached away. Therefore its water carries little dissolved material.

Eventually, says the AEC, the fish in the lower Savannah may become a bit radioactive, but not as hot as they would be if the river were less pure.

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