the Savannah River Site, managed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Biologists from the University of Georgia, led by professor Eugene Odum, began ecological studies of local plants and animals in 1951 creating Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), and plant construction began. Production of heavy water for site reactors started in the Heavy Water Rework Facility in 1952, and the first production reactor, R Reactor, went critical in 1953. P, L, and K Reactors followed in 1954, and the first irradiated fuel was discharged. F Canyon, the world's first operational full-scale PUREX separation plant, began radioactive operations on 4 November. PUREX (Plutonium and Uranium EXtraction) extracted plutonium and uranium products from materials irradiated in the reactors. In 1955, C Reactor went critical. The first plutonium shipment left the site. H Canyon, a chemical separation facility, began radioactive operations. Permanent tritium facilities became operational and the first shipment of tritium to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was made. In 1956, the construction of the basic plant was complete. Nobel Prize The neutrino was discovered by Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan using the flux from P Reactor, with confirmation published in the 20 July 1956 issue of Science. Reines was awarded the 1995 Physics Nobel Prize; Cowan had already died. In 1961, the AEC established a permanent ecology laboratory on the site; two Army barracks were converted into laboratory space for the scientists. The next year, the University of Georgia hired a full-time staff with doctoral degrees to expand the research effort. Known initially as the Laboratory of Radiation Ecology, it was renamed in the mid-1960s the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, reflecting the broad spectrum of ecological studies carried out on the site. In 1962, the Heavy Water Components Test Reactor (HWCTR) went into operation, testing the heavy water system for use with civilian power reactors. In 1963, Receiving Basin for Off-Site Fuels (RBOF) received its first shipment of off-site spent nuclear fuel. That same year, curium-244 was produced as a heat source for space exploration. This was the first full scale conversion of an SRP reactor load to non-weapons materials. R-Reactor and HWCTR were shut down in 1964. In 1965, californium-252, the heaviest isotope produced at SRP, was separated as a byproduct of the curium program. Beginning in 1969, californium-252 was made in a separate production program. Palomares Following the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash, the Savannah River Site received contaminated soil