At approximately 6:30 PM on the night of July 13, 1959, engineers working at an experimental reactor in the Santa Susana hills confronted their worst nightmare: an out of control reactor. It's called "an excursion," in Orwellian nukespeak but in fact it was the start of a partial meltdown that would take over a month to control and has taken over 50 years to clean up at a cost of over $250-million and will take another 50,000 years to clear the released contamination from the groundwater.
It was fifty years ago today, that the city of Los Angeles experienced the meltdown at the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) that, except for blind luck, didn't become LA's Chernobyl. Unlike Chernobyl or Three Mile Island this research reactor didn't have a protective containment structure and a breach could have, "released more radiation than was released at Three Mile Island," said Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap.
Still, according to Hirsch, the meltdown released enough radioactive isotopes to cause over a thousand cancers. While the SRE melting may have fallen short of other large scale catastrophes the nuclear industry didn't want the public to know about what happened in LA's backyard.
Hirsch has led the charge to bring this reactor accident to light and force a succession of corporate owners of the site, and the government, to clean up the contaminated mountaintop facility. Nothing happened until he and a group of UCLA students (of which I was a part) uncovered government and corporate documents and films that revealed what had happened. The incident had been covered up for over twenty years, hidden from, the general public, local emergency responders, residents whose homes backed up to the site, children who played in the creek that transported radioactive isotopes down the hill and even the workers charged with cleaning up the highly radioactive mess who were never told about the dangers of their jobs.
"They took our (radiation) badges and locked them in the safe," said John Pace who as a twenty-something new hire at the Atomics International site was pressed into service to help clean up the radiation contaminated reactor building starting the day after the meltdown began. Pace explained that when the badges showed the "radiation went off the scales," the managers took away their badges because they'd have to send the workers home if they were exposed to that much radiation. "We wouldn't have enough workers," he said.
Pace and his fellow cleanup crew members weren't issued any protective clothing or gear. "We wore regular cotton coveralls, nothing special," said Pace. Their first job was to seal the control room's windows and doorjambs with tape so the engineers would be safe. The workers were sent into the room with the reactor and started to scrub the floor and walls. They soon found this approach was too expensive because "the brooms, sponges and mops got contaminated quickly and had to be thrown away." Their solution, "we decided to use Kotex, sanitary napkins to scrub the floors and the walls," which were disposable.
While the crew scrubbed, the engineers and executives huddled -- trying to figure out what to do now that the unthinkable had happened. Pace knew it was serious because "we never saw those guys -- wearing suits and ties," in the reactor building.
The suits' bright idea was to start up the reactor again and then see what happened when they tried to shut it down. Pace said they did this repeatedly for about a month during which time more radiation was released, especially when one of the workers operating a small crane "panicked, hit the wrong button and dropped" one of the highly contaminated control rods. This work also contaminated many of the records of the accident which had to be destroyed.
Over a month after the accident, the company finally issued a cryptic press release embargoed until Saturday morning, August 29. Issuing a release for the weekend is considered a good way to bury any item you don't want anyone to write about because most newspapers are thinly staffed on the weekends. Something that stated "a parted fuel element was observed," and claimed this was not "an indication of unsafe reactor conditions," was destined to be buried in a pile of other more pressing news such as the lightening storms that killed nine people on the East coast that day.
Their strategy worked and few people outside of the nuclear brotherhood knew about the accident until I stumbled on some literature that mentioned the accident, while visiting the Bridge the Gap offices, twenty years later in 1979. A brief mention from a nuclear engineer, who was horrified by the hazard-strewn, secret past of the nuclear industry, had been printed in a newsletter from an anti-nuclear group. I was searching for topics for the first film I had to make while studying at the UCLA Film School. I'd decided, in the aftermath of Three Mile Island that looking at nuclear facilities in Los Angeles was, no pun intended, a hot topic.
I made a copy of the newsletter and contacted the engineer who confirmed that there had been a meltdown. Repeated attempts to pry documents or information out of Atomics International proved fruitless but I discovered that official reports had to be sent to regional Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Depository libraries and the UCLA Engineering library was a depository.
After convincing the librarian to find someone to fix the aging microcard reader (a precursor to microfiche) I was able to surf a seemingly unlimited number of documents and reports about "operational accidents and radiation exposure experience" in the nuclear industry. Armed with a bag of nickels to feed the copying machine I slogged through what I thought were the most promising.
It became clear that benign sounding words like "excursion" or "incident" were code for troubling, dangerous and sometimes deadly accidents. The SRE's was not the only "excursion" in fact there had been 26 in the years between 1946 and 1970 "when the power level of fissile systems became uncontrollable because of unplanned or unexpected changes in the system reactivity," according to one AEC report I found. I was dumbstruck. Before the SRE, I'd thought Three Mile Island was the only nuclear accident.
We'd also been told by the nuclear industry and the government that, "radiation from nuclear plants has not caused any known deaths among the public." Which most assumed meant no one had died due to a nuclear power accident. In fact, during this time six deaths of nuclear workers (not the general public) were, "attributable to nuclear causes." Three of those deaths occurred when the SL-1 reactor at the Idaho Falls research facility had an "excursion" that killed two members of the crew "instantly" and a third man died hours later due to head injuries. One of the workers was speared by a exploding fuel rod and sent flying to the ceiling where he remained impaled until the rescue crew figured out how to get him down without killing anyone else from radiation exposure. All three were buried in lead-lined coffins.
I also found that the SRE was one of three similar reactors that were being tested around the country. The other two, one in Piqua, Ohio and one in Hallam, Nebraska were also shut down after experiencing fuel melting. Both of these reactor complexes were entombed in giant concrete structures where they will have to be guarded for years.
I shared my findings with Hirsch who began to plan for their release, which led to a nuclear power educational effort that continues today.
Speaking at a press conference this morning commemorating the anniversary of the SRE meltdown, Hirsch shared his concern about whether we've learned anything from the past before we rush into a nuclear revival. "It's a powerful lesson of how things can go wrong with technology," said Hirsch.
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"I just spoke with Denise Brach, the Ombudsman for the SSFL. She is the person to call to receive a personal tracking number. Each individual who lived near or worked at the SSFL and became sick are entitled to file a claim.
Denise Brach 1-888-272-
DoE 1-866-534-
I think the DoE should appoint the National Institute Of Saftey and Health - Disease Registry to keep track of "ALL" affected people."
I lived there until 1987 at which time I moved to Northridge for about 3 years.
I have always been very healthy. No cancer in my family. No history of thyroid disease in my family.
But, I have thyroid cancer. How? The doctors all asked me if I was exposed to radiation, I said no. Wow, was I wrong!!!! It looks like I was exposed, my little 3 year old body was exposed and for many years. The years when my thyroid was easily hurt by this exposure. I have a large scar on my neck, my parotid glands are all blocked so I can't eat anything dry as I don't salivate. This will bring on lifelong dental problems. I have to take medication everyday for the rest of my life. My body temperatur
What can those of us who have cancer because of this exposure to radiation can do?
Yet, when Chris Rowe – Board Member of the West Hills Neighborho
That is not true at all. I opened with Christina Walsh the Aerospace CANCER Museum of Education.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but let’s not deny the health impacts on the workers who died for our Country and the innocent casualties of the surroundin
Take care
William Preston Bowling
Founder/Di
Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education
23350 Lake Manor Drive
Chatsworth
http://www
ACME the Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education, Los Angeles Chapter. ACME - Educating the Public of Neighborin
Other links of interest on this subject…
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http://www
Please Consider the Environmen
Moorpark was not a city in the 1950's. Moorpark was and still is a largely hispanic community that supported agricultur
I have before me the "final" decision of FONSI dated March 2003 where they were walking away leaving 99% behind. We are all thankful that you weren't around back then to cause the damage that you cause now. Just remember, we are NOT going away no matter what you continue to do to us. Go ahead and yell from the highest mountain, it doesn't matter, because the truth is out, and it is not going away, not EVER.
Never mind all the other facilities that are in these United States.
The only time I (age 13) even thought about this facility, was when they tested the Rockets & all the surroundin
Myself & my sister are the only ones left out of a once strong & able family of six.
We have endured a nightmare of various diseases & maladies, as well as our friends & family, old & new..
How they could do this to the public & employees is unbelievab
One of my oldest friends, whose Mother & Father worked at Rocketdyne
There are not enough words to even remotely relate to the horror I feel.
There is not a day that goes by now that this isn't in my thoughts or dreams.
we all lived on Nita Avenue in Canoga Park starting 1964. My sister's friend's
Father died an early death from what? BRAIN CANCER!
of Melanoma Nov 2005, age 56, the other cardiovasc
My family lived basically next door to this site. My Father died 1989, Cancer
of the Larynx and non hodgkins Lymphoma. We drank, bathed, cooked with
Well water. It is not just my family, it is many families all have written to me
emailed me, thyroid cancers, thyroid problems, kidney cancers, hodgkins
disease, pancreatic cancer, liver failures, colon cancers, breast cancers,
Colon Cancers, Lung Cancers, oral cancers and on and on. Yes nuclear
technology and safety practices have come a long way in 50 years,
unfortunat
If the nuclear industry lies to you over and over, do you want nuclear power? I don't care if "Nuclear technology and safety practices have come a long way in 50 years." I consider that a lie, based upon the many lies I have learned about within this industry and that continue to proliferat
Read more about the French and their nuclear power industry before you make claims that they're 'smarter than us.' Perhaps "smart" means learning more before making the big jump to trust someone a business that is proficient at lying.
//Paul K. Sholar (Twitter: @bkwdgreen
TheAeroSpa
These documents refer to the RMHF at the SSFL.
What this stands for is:
Radiologic
Isn't it the "700 documents" that list the disposal of radiologic
chemicals at this site? Dates like 1961 through 1969.? Tens of Thousands
of barrels or gallons or pounds of you name it (not exactly good for human consumptio
Disposal, now lets explore this! Sodium Burn Pits?
http://www