Savannah River

The leak of a small amount of radioactive coolant into the Savannah River this week has been termed harmless, but officials 90 miles downstream are concerned about plans to tap the river for drinking water. Coolant contaminated with the radioactive gas tritium leaked from the Savannah River Site's K Reactor near Aiken, S.C., sometime between Sunday and Wednesday. The government reactor is the country's only source of tritium, which is used in thermonuclear warheads.

ATLANTA -- In certain quarters of the American South, it's common to hear complaints that the remnants of the old Confederacy are an impediment to progress. In the old port town of Savannah, Ga., the remnants are iron-clad, and lying at the bottom of the Savannah River. The Associated Press reports  that an iron-sided Civil War shipwreck, the CSS Georgia, is getting in the way of a major plan to deepen Savannah's port, a $653-million project that will help Georgia capitalize on the huge cargo ships that will pass through an upgraded Panama Canal in the next couple of years.

The Energy Department expects to have all three of its nuclear-weapons reactors at Savannah River in South Carolina running by the end of next year and will set a firm timetable this week for restarting the first unit, senior officials said Friday. The department expects to restart the plant's K-reactor, which produces tritium gas for nuclear weapons, before long-term safety improvements are complete.

Among U.S. seaports, only two ? Los Angeles and Long Beach ? have ever moved more than 7 million cargo containers in a year. Now, an East Coast project is aiming to become the third to accomplish that feat. The $500-million Jasper Ocean Terminal, on the Savannah River near the Port of Savannah, is being jointly developed by the states of Georgia and South Carolina. The port will be built to handle 7 million cargo containers annually. That's a mark that Los Angeles hasn't hit since 2008 and that Long Beach hasn't reached since 2007.

The Savannah River Plant, the nation's sole source of a critical nuclear weapons component, may not reopen until the end of 1989, months later than the Energy Department projected, it was reported. The later-than-projected restart is because of delays in implementing a department plan to overhaul training, safety, inspection, management and other operations at the plant, the New York Times reported.

The Department of Energy has reduced power levels at its last remaining plutonium-production reactor by more than 10%, the third cutback in 14 months, after scientists warned the reactor was still operating beyond the demonstrated capacity of its emergency cooling system, it was reported. DOE officials confirmed that power at the L reactor, one of three government reactors at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, was reduced Feb. 12, the Washington Post said.

The multibillion-dollar facility where nuclear defense waste is to be stored is years behind schedule and may never work when it is completed, a federal report says. The Defense Waste Processing Facility at Savannah River Site once was scheduled to become operational in 1990. But it will not be ready before 1994, and maybe not even then, according to the General Accounting Office report released Friday.

Tears streamed down cashier Heather Watts' cheeks when one of her longtime customers strolled into the Time Saver Minit Market the other day to play the Fantasy 5 lottery. Watts had not seen the man since sugar dust exploded into a fireball at the local Dixie Crystals refinery Feb. 7, killing 12. She has worried about the workers who have not been in to grab sodas and cigarettes or fill up on gas. "You learn their shifts, and you know what they want," Watts said. The spot near the Kool-Aid dispenser and the hot dog stand where workers used to stop to chat on shift changes is empty now. "It feels strange when they don't stop by."

As crews pulled another body from the charred remnants of a sugary refinery, families and co-workers waited anxiously for identities of the five dead and the fate of the three men still missing. They also hoped for any sign of recovery among the worst injured in the explosion and fire, which left 20 workers hospitalized with severe burns, 17 of them in medically induced comas. "It's just hours of waiting right now," said Hallie Capers, whose two nephews were in critical condition at a burn center in Augusta, 130 miles up the Savannah River.

Imagine 12,000 pounds of bomb-grade plutonium, some of the most dangerous stuff on Earth, barreling down Interstate 20 in heavily fortified trucks. Dozens of state troopers stand in the way, their squad cars barricading the highway. The governor of South Carolina lies in the road, in his signature seersucker suit, daring the feds to cross the state line. It's an absurd scenario. But it could come down to that.

No one disputes that a monument to slaves is overdue in this mostly black Southern city where none of the more than 40 plaques, pillars and statues pays tribute to blacks. But even those who welcome the proposed $350,000 granite-and-bronze African American Monument--showing a black family with broken chains at their feet--cringe at a quotation that some want inscribed at its base.

In his 1912 book, "The Lost World," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes a stretch of open savannah in southeastern Venezuela, a land speckled with tabletop mountains billions of years old where "the ordinary laws of nature are suspended" and prehistoric creatures still roam. By most estimations, Conan Doyle was inspired by Venezuela's Gran Sabana, a rolling, grassy highland--beautiful, empty and silent, and until recently, virtually inaccessible by land. Today, 7.

Between "The Parade" and "The Book," this gracious, old Southern city, with its shady jasmine-scented squares, has become hotter than a pepper sprout. "The Parade" is Savannah's St. Patrick's Day Parade, which dates back to 1813 and now ranks as the world's second-largest. A bash of Donnybrook Fair proportions, the celebration goes on for several days, draws a half-million spectators, generates $8 million in business and decimates pyramids of beer kegs along the cobblestoned riverfront.

Don Ramert had never heard of Savannah until he read the book. "I was on Chapter 3 when I made my reservations to come here," said the Ontario, Canada, native, wolfing down creamed corn enriched with bacon drippings and buttery bowlfuls of squash au gratin at a packed Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House, a local lunch institution. In just about anywhere else in the South, "The Book" would mean the Bible.

"I see you have 'The Book,' " people said in Savannah when they spotted "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" under my arm. It was, I noted, an observation made each time in a curiously uninflected tone and without elaboration. Yes, I had "The Book," and what's more, I had read it too. So had a friend, which was one reason why we were poking around Savannah for a couple of days--an endeavor in which we were not alone.