Nuke site looked at for darkness training

[cec]

Nuke site looked at for darkness training




By Susanne M. Schafer - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Dec 24, 2007 10:01:39 EST

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The military is looking for a few good acres — very, very dark ones.
The Army apparently has its night-vision goggles focused on the huge tract of federal land that makes up the 310-acre Savannah River nuclear complex in the southwestern portion of this state. The Army wants to train its light infantry units in battle exercises there that may include Army, Navy and Air Force Special Operations Forces.
The plan was publicized in an announcement issued last month by Andrew Grainger, the National Environmental Protection Act compliance officer at the Savannah River site. The federal government is required by law to announce proposed changes in its land use and seek public comment.
The exercises could involve anywhere from a handful of troops to 4,000 soldiers that make up certain types of combat teams, the announcement said.
The Savannah River complex’s isolation and that only 10 percent of its acreage is now in use make it attractive to the military, as does some challenging terrain, said Jim Guisti, a Department of Energy spokesman at the site. “We have lots of swamps, timberland and areas intersected by some roadways,” he said.
The complex is located along 14 miles of the Savannah River about a dozen miles south of Augusta, Ga. Its land was purchased in the 1950s as the government cleared out small communities and moved farmers to make way for five nuclear reactors and sites for building components for nuclear warheads.
With the end of the Cold War, the facility sharply reduced its work force, shut down the reactors and started cleaning the site. Transforming old weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel also is planned.
James Hudgins, an Army spokesman at Fort Gordon, across the Savannah River in Georgia, said the draw for the military might well be the site’s darkness because there are no major cities nearby.
“Its real advantage is that it has low ambient light,” Hudgins said of the Savannah site. He said there are several small “drop zones” on the site that could be used for “deployable signal corps forces, helicopter extractions, that type of thing.”
Under those conditions, troops use night-vision goggles and special scopes on their weapons to help them see in the dark. “But you have to train where it’s dark enough to do it,” Hudgins said.
Steve Siegfried, a retired two-star general who was commander at Fort Jackson from 1991-1994, said training military forces along the crowded East Coast is tough because of the encroachment of population into formerly forested areas.
“Trying to find land that is undeveloped is a very difficult task,” he said.
Before the new training could begin, an environmental assessment will be conducted and the Energy Department will evaluate whether to approve the Army’s request, Guisti said.
“This is something new for us,” he said. The only military exercises that have taken place at the complex in the past were very limited and only for what Guisti would call “security purposes.”
The training would not begin before early 2009, Guisti said.
“The advantage is, it’s already owned by the federal government and it’s already secure,” Hudgins said.
No heavy tracked vehicles such as tanks would be driven, nor would “live fire” or real bullets and armaments be used during the maneuvers, he said, adding the Army has promised not to enter environmentally sensitive areas on the site that contain protected species, such as the red-cockaded woodpecker.
Bob Guild, an environmental attorney and conservation chairman for the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, said the military has protected the woodpecker at several other installations in the region, including Fort Stewart., Ga., and Fort Jackson.
“That suggests that you can conduct military training in a way that is fully compatible with environmental protection,” Guild said.



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