Gary Johnson and Sean Hayes - and their oddly rigged boat - are familiar sights to anglers who navigate the dark waters of the lower Savannah River.
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"We're out here at least every two weeks," said Mr. Johnson, an environmental specialist for Georgia's Environmental Protection Division.
Their boat, outfitted with a noisy generator that pumps high voltage through cables suspended from long poles, is used to harvest fish that are tested for something few people expect to find - radiation.
"We've been monitoring this area since the 1970s, due to the presence of Savannah River Site," said Jim Hardeman, the manager of EPD's Environmental Radiation Monitoring program.
Although EPD studies all Georgia waterways with ties to nuclear facilities, the Savannah River program is by far the largest of its kind, because of SRS and the Vogtle Nuclear Generating Plant in Burke County, Ga.
"The Savannah River is a main concern for several reasons," Mr. Hardeman said. "In the early 1990s, we started seeing an increase in radionuclides in fish. The other event that got us paying more attention to SRS was the finding of tritium in ground water in Burke County."
The discovery of tritium in Georgia in the mid-1990s, which scientists suspect is linked to SRS, caused an upswing in area studies.
"I don't think anyone can be truly definitive on how the tritium got there, but that was one of the things that truly got everyone's attention, all the way to the governor's office," Mr. Hardeman said.
In addition to fish from the Savannah River, EPD monitors other things for radiation: milk, peaches, soil, vegetation, pecans, corn and other crops, especially in Burke, Richmond and other nearby counties.
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Yellow perch are collected by electro-fishing, which involves the use of high voltage to briefly stun fish, causing them to float to the surface.
JIM BLAYLOCK/STAFF
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The team gathers fish from nine sites - eight in freshwater areas and one saltwater location closer to Savannah, where shrimp and crabs are collected with the fish.
"We try to collect five fish from each species at each location," Mr. Johnson said. "And we try to collect the smaller fish."
The fish are shipped to Georgia Tech for testing, ground in a blenderlike device into a thick mush and tested for radioactive contamination.
"In fish, the two things we have seen historically, which we track to SRS, are cesium-137 and strontium-90, both fission product radionuclides and available in large quantities at SRS," Mr. Hardeman said. "Historically, those materials have gotten into creeks."
SRS was the primary site for making nuclear weapons materials for more than four decades, during which time contamination leaked into the air, soil and water. Despite cleanup activities, small amounts of radiation continue to escape.
Predictably, the fish with the highest concentrations of radiation are those found at or near the confluence of creeks flowing from SRS into the Savannah River, Mr. Hardeman said.
According to the program's test reports, tritium concentrations in fish ranged from 15 to 90 times the normal background level, although those levels are still a tiny fraction of the density that would cause injury.
For example, the average cancer risk from eating those fish was estimated to be four per 100 million.
Similarly, the data reveal elevated levels of cesium-137 and strontium-90 in the fish tissue, but those concentrations also are deemed safe, according to EPD.
"Based on current concentrations of radionuclides found, the Department of Natural Resources believes fish are safe to eat," the program report concluded.
Reach Robert Pavey at (706) 868-1222, ext. 119, or rob.pavey@augustachronicle.com.
