Crews rush to clean up former California nuke lab

[bananas]

Source: Associated Press

The sun was barely up at a former Cold War rocket test site when crews in hard hats, neon vests and steel-toe boots collected jars of dirt as part of a massive effort to clean up from a partial nuclear meltdown a half century ago.

Parties that inherited the toxic mess face a 2017 deadline to restore the sprawling hilltop complex on the outskirts of Los Angeles to its condition before chemical and radioactive wastes leached into the soil and groundwater.

<snip>

In 1959, a reactor partially melted, belching radioactive gases. The reactor was shut down but later restarted. The government at the time said there was no dangerous radioactive release. Full details of the meltdown were not made public until two decades later by a group of University of California, Los Angeles, students.

<snip>

Even if the bulk of contaminated soil is scooped up and hauled away, the groundwater problem persists. The state estimates it would take many decades to complete that part of the cleanup.

Read more: http://www.starherald.com/news/nation_world/crews-rush-to-clean-up-former-california-nuke-lab/article_52f0851e-07af-11e3-99b0-0019bb2963f4.html

---

This is why people don't trust the nuclear industry.
They lied for two decades about this.

[bemildred]

1. Nuclear energy is dirty energy.

For the long run, we have to have clean energy. Nature is not kind to creatures that pollute their own environment.

[benh57]

25. False

Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest energy sources there is. Modern plant designs exist with zero waste.

Fukushima, etc are 40 year old designs. It's like saying cars should be banned based on the safety record of a 1960 car.

Educate yourself.

[bemildred]

26. Yawn. nt

[mockmonkey]

28. Educate me

What do you mean by zero waste?

[wordpix]

32. Yeah, clean and cheap, too, that's why nuke corp's can't get funding for new nukes and

must come to US taxpayers for taxpayer-guaranteed loans in the billion$.

And it's so healthy too! No, nuke emissions and releases into air, water and soil don't cause cancer

Keep up the mantra "cheap and clean" and maybe the multitudes will believe you instead of what they can read with their own eyes and learn with brains that still work.

[freshwest]

39. 'Cheap for who?' is the question for the day, class! Hint: Nuke corps make out like bandits!

While taxpayers, workers, neighbors and the local ecosystem get the shaft. Where's the mainstream media outrage?

[chervilant]

2. Omni magazine

published an article about the health consequences to humans and livestock of nuclear weapons tests. Denizens of Utah and Nevada were lied to -- told that it was safe to watch the mushroom clouds. Folks would sit out on the hoods of their cars, having hot chocolate and pastries for breakfast, and watch while tons of radioactive fallout fell to the earth. A significant number of people exposed to the fallout died from leukemia and other cancers.

[90-percent]

3. Fukashima

that's the nuclear power disaster that will be giving the world all kinds of cancers for many decades to come.

-jim

[JayhawkSD]

4. The article is mostly gibberish

There is something about reactors, one of which melted down and was restarted. How did that contaminate the area so disasterously that it is a Superfund site half a century later? No hint. It was testing rockets, but it doesn't say that were nuclear rockets and it's unlikely that they were that close to LA. Why did a "rocket test site" have ten nuclear reactors? What is the geographical extent, in acres or square miles, of the contamination?

You close with "This is why people don't trust the nuclear industry," but in what way was this site related to the nuclear industry? It was a rocket test site.

I don't doubt there is contamination. It's everywhere. San Diego Bay is being cleaned as we speak of lethal sediment dumped by shipyards and the Navy. There's a nuclear waste dump in Utah that is thousands of tons and is leaking radioactive waste into the Colorado River. Hanford is simply indescribable. But this article is written by an amateur and is just gibberish.

[kristopher]

6. Your unsubstantiated rant is more like 'gibberish' than anything in the article

From the article.

Founded in 1947 by North American Aviation, Santa Susana quickly became an aerospace hub. For four decades, workers tested thousands of rocket engines that later flew on missions that included Apollo. The site also hummed with nuclear research and was once home to 10 reactors.
In 1959, a reactor partially melted, belching radioactive gases. The reactor was shut down but later restarted. The government at the time said there was no dangerous radioactive release. Full details of the meltdown were not made public until two decades later by a group of University of California, Los Angeles, students.

Your comment.

It was testing rockets, but it doesn't say that were nuclear rockets and it's unlikely that they were that close to LA. Why did a "rocket test site" have ten nuclear reactors?

If you are disputing such basic facts, feel free to provide an actual source that shows this information false.

Similarly, if you want to dispute the contribution made by the reactor meltdown and consequent release of toxins, show some evidence.

Just acting like the story has it wrong doesn't cut it. Prove it.

[NickB79]

8. I wonder if they were associated with Project Rover

Or working on something similar independently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA

That would explain rocket testing AND multiple reactors on-site.

[hunter]

10. I lived nearby as a kid. We could hear the engine tests and see the plumes.

It was a huge window rattling rumble, continuous thunder.

The nuclear program was separate, they were developing reactors for use in space as power plants.

Since 1947 the Santa Susana Field Laboratory location has been used by a number of companies and agencies. The first was Rocketdyne, originally a division of North American Aviation-NAA, which developed a variety of pioneering, successful and reliable liquid rocket engines. Some were those used in the Navaho cruise missile, the Redstone rocket, the Thor and Jupiter ballistic missiles, early versions of the Delta and Atlas rockets, the Saturn rocket family and the Space Shuttle Main Engine. The Atomics International division of North American Aviation utilized a separate and dedicated portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to build and operate the first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States and for the testing and development of compact nuclear reactors including the first and only known nuclear reactor launched into Low Earth Orbit by the United States, the SNAP-10A.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

[bemildred]

14. Me too. Remember it well.

Wondering if I got dusted.

[nebenaube]

27. I remember some space junk that they really wanted people to stay away from...

I wonder, Hmmm.

[tofuandbeer]

12. +!

[kristopher]

16. Hiyayakko!

[tofuandbeer]

34. :D

[JayhawkSD]

30. I'm not disputing anything,

I didn't say that I thought anything was untrue. Where in my comment did I "dispute" anything?

What I said was that the article claims "contamination" and given no specifics of the contamination. Rocket testing and ten reactors, one of which partially melted but was so little damaged that it was able to be restarted, says nothing about what caused the contamination or what the extent of the contamination is.

Can you point out anything in the cited article that says what caused the contamination? Can you point out anything in the cited article that discusses the actual extent of the contamination? Can you point out anything in the cited article that describes the specific nature of the contamination other than a vague "radiation" accusation?

You cannot. I am not saying there is no contamination, in fact I said in my response that "I don't doubt that there is contamination" and that "contamination exists everywhere." But because I had the effrontery not to fawningly agree with the original poster and join in with the rant started by the thread you accuse me of disputing facts that I never disputed. DU is turning into an echo chamber that demands utter agreement, failing which comes a confrontation and demands of proof. Constant chants of "oh you are so right" do not constitute a discussion.

[cannondale]

9. Industries involved with nuclear particles = nuclear industries

"How did that contaminate the area so disasterously that it is a Superfund site half a century later? No hint."

Just because you don't understand what happened doesn't mean it didn't happen. You want to know how, and expect an article to answer that for you, but worse think that the article is gibberish.

"but in what way was this site related to the nuclear industry?"

In the way that nuclear industries are related to nuclear industries. I'm not sure how else to explain that to you. Are you stuck on the word "nuclear" or "industries?"

[bananas]

11. "In what way was this site related to the nuclear industry?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

<snip>

The Atomics International Division of North American Aviation utilized SSFL Area IV as the site of United States first commercial nuclear power plant[14] and the testing and development of the SNAP-10A, the first nuclear reactor launched into outer space by the United States.[15]

<snip>

The Sodium Reactor Experiment-SRE was an experimental nuclear reactor which operated from 1957 to 1964 and was the first commercial power plant in the world to experience a core meltdown.[17] There was a decades-long cover-up by the US Department of Energy.[18] The operation predated environmental regulation, so early disposal techniques are not recorded in detail.[18] Thousands of pounds of sodium coolant from the time of the meltdown are not yet accounted for.[19]

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment

<snip>

The Los Angeles Times published a front-page story when Moorpark was supplied with nuclear-generated electricity. Edward R. Murrow’s television program See It Now featured the event as a special news report, broadcast on November 24, 1957. <snip>



Gail Fowler of Atomics International displays an L.A. Times headline about the reactor's production of electricity (November 1957)

<snip>

[hunter]

5. The greater part of the mess on this site is non-nuclear.

Every chemical used in the aerospace industry (solvents, coolants, lubricants, hydraulic fluids, waste rocket fuel, etc.) was dumped on the ground haphazardly, and sometimes burned.

In comparison what toxins are left from the nuclear reactor are a much smaller concern.

There are thousands of contaminated sites like this throughout Los Angeles, everything from mom & pop auto mechanics who dumped their waste on the ground for decades, to giant petrochemical plants.

I've walked the reactor site. The reactor itself was hauled away a long time ago.

We are so focused on the nuclear genii that we're letting other industries especially the fossil fuel industry get away literally with manslaughter. A power plant fueled by fracked natural gas isn't any better than a nuclear plant; in many, many ways it's far worse.

But the most extreme environmental disaster in Southern California has always been corrupt development. It's these corrupt developers playing the tune while the anti-nuclear activists dance and distract.

[kristopher]

7. So developers kept the meltdown secret for 20 years?

The nuclear industry lies as badly as or worse than the petrochemical industry ever did - and yes, that is saying a lot.

To put our faith and energy future in a high risk system like nuclear - which is founded on secrecy and lies to the public - when there is a clearly viable alternative that is more effective at CO2 reductions, safer, faster to deploy and more compatible with small 'd' democratic values is either pure insanity or greed.

[bemildred]

13. I can assure you that most of them would not bat an eye at that idea.

As long as they feel assured of getting away with it. It would almost be a reflex.

Not that I want to defend nuclear power, mind you.

[hunter]

15. Are you talking about natural gas as a "viable alternative?" I hope not.

Anyways, you know my position. It's well past time to spin this economy down to sustainable levels. You can't fix things by building more crap. Building crap is what got us into this mess.

We need to figure out how to shut down power plants of all kinds, not by replacing them, but by going without. We need to figure out how to get by without automobiles too.

It's like quitting smoking -- you are not quitting if you switch from cigarettes to a pipe.

Alas, this industrial civilization will continue to burn fossil fuels until climate change destroys it.

If our species was smart we'd euthanize our high energy industrial civilization on our own terms, improving life for everyone in the process.

But we're not smart, and nature will do the dirty work as she always has, by killing off great numbers of us in horrible ways.

As an aside, and in response to your title question, the accident wasn't a secret. In those days, back when they were conducting open air nuclear tests, deliberately exposing people to nuclear fallout, it probably didn't seem like that big a deal. The reactor broke, they fixed it. The films of the accident and subsequent repairs are quite mundane.

http://etec.energy.gov/Library/Video/SRE_Video/SRE_Recovery.html

In my own experience the nuclear industry often dissembled behind an implied wall of cold war secrecy, but this project wasn't secret.

[kristopher]

18. You know damned well RENEWABLES ARE THE FUTURE.

[hunter]

19. Same as back in the 'seventies...

I got tired of waiting for that shiny future and later decided it was a mirage at best, a deception at worst.

Happiness is watching your own garden grow. Freedom is not having to own a car.

Sure, there's a place for individual solar, but it may be small, just enough to run the internet, phone, and a few LED lamps. But if you are actually able to reach that place it hardly matters where your energy comes from.

[kristopher]

20. Actually the 70s were the heyday of the Nuclear Bandwagon

When they were conning everyone into investing billions in plants (that were never going to be completed) that were designed to preserve a system based on coal.

In contrast, "renewable sources worldwide will exceed that from gas and be twice that from nuclear by 2016".

Power generation from hydro, wind, solar and other renewable sources worldwide will exceed that from gas and be twice that from nuclear by 2016, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today in its second annual Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report (MTRMR).

According to the MTRMR, despite a difficult economic context, renewable power is expected to increase by 40% in the next five years. Renewables are now the fastest-growing power generation sector and will make up almost a quarter of the global power mix by 2018, up from an estimated 20% in 2011. The share of non-hydro sources such as wind, solar, bioenergy and geothermal in total power generation will double, reaching 8% by 2018, up from 4% in 2011 and just 2% in 2006.

“As their costs continue to fall, renewable power sources are increasingly standing on their own merits versus new fossil-fuel generation,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven as she presented the report at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in New York. “This is good news for a global energy system that needs to become cleaner and more diversified, but it should not be an excuse for government complacency, especially among OECD countries.”

Even as the role of renewables increases across all sectors, the MTRMR cautions that renewable development is becoming more complex and faces challenges – especially in the policy arena. In several European countries with stagnating economies and energy demand, debate about the costs of renewable support policies is mounting. In addressing these issues, Ms. Van der Hoeven warned that “policy uncertainty is public enemy number one” for investors: “Many renewables no longer require high economic incentives. But they do still need long-term policies that provide a predictable and reliable market and regulatory framework compatible with societal goals,” she stated. “And worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels remain six times higher than economic incentives for renewables.”

The forecasts in the report build on the impressive growth registered in 2012, when global renewable generation rose by over 8% despite a challenging investment, policy and industry context in some areas. In absolute terms, global renewable generation in 2012 – at 4 860 TWh – exceeded the total estimated electricity consumption of China.

Two main factors are driving the positive outlook for renewable power generation. First, investment and deployment are accelerating in emerging markets, where renewables help to address fast-rising electricity demand, energy diversification needs and local pollution concerns while contributing to climate change mitigation. Led by China, non-OECD countries are expected to account for two-thirds of the global increase in renewable power generation between now and 2018. Such rapid deployment is expected to more than compensate for slower growth and smooth out volatility in other areas, notably Europe and the US.

Second, in addition to the well-established competitiveness of hydropower, geothermal and bioenergy, renewables are becoming cost-competitive in a wider set of circumstances. For example, wind competes well with new fossil-fuel power plants in several markets, including Brazil, Turkey and New Zealand. Solar is attractive in markets with high peak prices for electricity, for instance, those resulting from oil-fired generation. Decentralised solar photovoltaic generation costs can be lower than retail electricity prices in a number of countries.

The MTRMR also sees gains for biofuels in transport and for renewable sources for heat, though at somewhat slower growth rates than renewable electricity. Biofuels output, adjusted for energy content, should account for nearly 4% of global oil demand for road transport in 2018, up from 3% in 2012. But advanced biofuels growth is proceeding only slowly.

As a portion of final energy consumption for heat, renewable sources, excluding traditional biomass, should rise to almost 10% in 2018, from over 8% in 2011. But the potential of renewable heat remains largely unexploited.

http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2013/june/name,39156,en.html

[hunter]

21. And I was an anti-nuclear activist then...

... traveling between San Onofre and Humboldt.

[kristopher]

22. And yet you still make false claims about what was happening with renewables?

Nah.

You are gungho nuclear now and probably always have been. You can't continuously take the side of nuclear for years and then wiggle out of your obvious desire to promote the industry just by claiming a frugal lifestyle or saying you used to be against it.

Your words of support are the determining factor.

[JayhawkSD]

35. Nice to hear someone else saying this.

I thought I was alone.

We blithely assume that today's America of 315 million people can enjoy the same standard of living that yesterday's America of 200 million did, and tomorrow's America of 500 million will be able to do the same. We cannot, and it will not.

"Renewables are the answer," says kristopher. No, they are not. Less energy use is the answer. A new paradigm of living is the answer.

Our planet already has more people than it can support. Right now. Not some day in the future, but today. If we find a different way to live we might be able to hang on. Otherwise civilization dies and a large part of us die with it.

[ninjanurse]

17. Worker poisoned by radiation in Rhode Island

In the 1960's a night shift worker was exposed to a lethal dose of radiation when material he was handling went critical at United Nuclear in Charlestown, RI. This is in the archives of The Providence Journal-- the accident, the emergency response, his awful death, the Superfund cleanup. I blogged about it here- http://kmareka.com/2011/03/15/rhode-island%E2%80%99s-nuclear-fatality%E2%80%93part-i/

[hunter]

23. Similar thing happened in Japan in 1999.

The accident occurred as three workers were preparing a small batch of fuel for the Jōyō experimental fast breeder reactor, using uranium enriched to 18.8% with the fissile radionuclide (radioisotope) known as U‑235 (with the remainder being the less-fissile U‑238). It was JCO's first batch of fuel for that reactor in three years, and no proper qualification and training requirements appear to have been established to prepare those workers for the job. At around 10:35 a.m., a precipitation tank reached critical mass when its fill level, containing about 16 kilograms of uranium, reached about 40 liters (about 35 pounds and 11 US gallons respectively)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident

[Octafish]

24. American children were used as nuclear guinea pigs.

Know your BFEE

[madokie]

29. As you said, this is why people don't trust the nuclear industry

Time and time again they've shown that they're not to be trusted.

[DBoon]

31. "We almost lost Detroit"

The history of the early nuclear industry is full of horrific accidents and near-accidents.

http://www.amazon.com/Almost-Lost-Detroit-John-Fuller/dp/0425067009

[wordpix]

33. at present we have cooling pools filled to overcapacity with nuke fuel rods

So while the past is horrific, the present is just as bad and if the nuke industry/gov doesn't deal with the waste and these pools filled with fuel rods, expect the future to be worse.

BTW, I am in NM right now not far from Los Alamos and there was a big wind today. All I could think about was the nuclear-contaminated soil blowing for miles. You could see the dust from 50 mi. away blowing up from lower to higher elevations.

[DeSwiss]

36. I don't trust them because they're liars AND......

...because they're idiots! Anyone who would utilize a fuel source whose by-product is a deadly radioactive waste that would take 100s of thousands of years to become inactive are total imbeciles.

- Fucking barbarians with nukes.

K&R

[davidpdx]

37. For this not to be known for two decades means it sat there

when clean up and containment could have been done. It's a sure bet some of it has leaked into the ground and contaminate the water supply. The deadline is 4 years away, geez why don't we just put it off until the end of the century at this point. LA is going to be basking in a green glow.

[cui bono]

38. Some more links about this:

Woman, residents believe cancer linked to Santa Susana Field Laboratory
http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20130616/woman-residents-believe-cancer-linked-to-santa-susana-field-laboratory

The Secrets of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Secrets-of-the-Santa-Susana-Field-Laboratory/337364244819?_fb_noscript=1

[hunter]

40. It's astonishing how people link their cancers to this specific accident...

... when they are swimming in a sea of toxins, many of them toxins they brought voluntarily into their own homes or spewed into the common environment as they drove their cars.

I'm going to reveal some personal details here which I don't usually do, not to protect my own crazy ass, but to spare friends and family the embarrassment of being associated with an internet loon.

I have family living in a boring suburban neighborhood close to the accident site. The accident site is just down a dirt road and not hard to get too. As idiot kids, double-dare trespassing was a sport.

I've met Dan Hirsch the UC Santa Cruz lecturer quoted in the article in our younger days of activism.

I know the Santa Susana Field Lab, I've read the documents, and honestly the nuclear crap is not the worst that went on there. As I've said before on DU many non-radioactive toxins "have a half life of FOREVER." They never decay. The worst in the Los Angeles area was probably lead from gasoline and insecticides, which lowered the intelligence of the general population by a few points and increased the level of violent crime by damaging kids' brains.

My own cancer scares have mostly been a consequence of solar radiation. When I was a kid parents generally thought it was "healthy" for their fair skinned kids to be tanned or freckled. Now as a guy in his fifties my skin looks awful. Sometimes I have grim looking skin growths removed and then have wait anxiously for the pathology reports. One of my brothers survived a fairly wretched cancer and has the scars to prove it, but this sort of cancer has a history in our family. These days it's treatable, in past times it killed people.

I've got the same general perspective about all the "cancer clusters" reported around the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant near Sacramento. The people living nearby were swimming in a sea of toxic agricultural and industrial chemicals so it didn't make sense to blame it on the nuclear plant. No, I'm not defending the plant, it was probably a gem of U.S. engineering at the time, just like the Chevy Vega or Space Shuttle, a bad accident waiting to happen, but there's no way to tell if it caused any cancers.

When we are talking about the deadly plagues of modern civilization nuclear power is not near the top of my list, automobiles are. Cars are smelly and they kill people, probably a few people you know in accidents, but also by carcinogenic toxins. Gasoline is a carcinogen, motor oil, especially used motor oil is a carcinogen, the crap your mechanic used to clean your car parts is a carcinogen, the radiator fluid your car burped up onto the parking lot is a carcinogen, the exhaust and micro-particles your tires shed are carcinogens, and all this toxic shit is everywhere.

[Nihil]

41. +1

> many non-radioactive toxins "have a half life of FOREVER." They never decay.

Don't start confusing people when they are much happier living in ignorance.

(Thank you for your post)

[bemildred]

42. +1. nt