RSSAll Entries in the "Rocketdyne" Category

Meltdown Man John Pace in 2009

More Meltdown Man

“They had two broken fuel rods they had to remove from the reactor core with a cherry picker. The last one pulled and fell off the cherry picker and fell on the floor before they could get it into the lead cask, and contaminated the High Bay area.”

Reading Writing & Radiation

Reading Writing & Radiation

Sound like fun? It is and you get the added benefit of not coming off like a complete ding-a-ling when you try to explain away a meltdown that the Department of Energy itself, the very agency that owned the failed reactor, calls a meltdown (and not even a “partial” one at that).

The Gloves Come Off

“What you don’t know is that in these secret negotiations that have gone on the last seven months, DOE, NASA, and Boeing have been resisting complying with that law and attempting to break the promise that they made to the Congress.”

13 of 43 fuel rods of the Sodium Reactor Experiment experienced melting in the 1959 partial meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

Meltdown Denier

Who has the time to actually go to a source when you can just be it yourself? And, say, shorten an article to 2,900 words and pawn it off on the editor who’ll do anything to get a rise, even having provocateurs impersonating reporters impersonating supposed sources to posit a revisionist version of a seminal event in Southern California.

Rocketdyne meeting tonight in Simi Valley

Rocketdyne meeting tonight in Simi Valley

It’s likely that the Radiation Rangers will attend and may have questions of the panel about our revelations that Boeing claimed that no offsite testing had been done in Runkle Canyon and that it didn’t border the 2,850-acre lab, when the very same report showed otherwise.

Sodium Reactor Experiment promo brochure

Exactly 50 years ago today, Atomics International was in the second-to-last day of the SRE meltdown that began on July 13, 1959. The amount of radiation released during this time, and after, was 260 to 459 times the same amount of radionuclides that escaped the more infamous Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania twenty years later, according to various sources including a comprehensive analysis of EnviroReporter.com. This fascinating brochure from 1957 presents the reactor in happier times.

Meltdown Dustup

Meltdown Dustup

The worst meltdown in U.S. history happened 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles from July 13-26, 1959. A reactor spewed hundreds of times more radiation than Three Mile Island did in 1979. The effects of this covered-up meltdown still reverberate throughout Southern California today.

Fire on the Mountain fired up this activist

Fire on the Mountain fired up this activist

Environmental investigations can take a lot of time and are arduous to research, write and produce. We call it “the slog.” There are times that are especially trying like getting Version 2 of EnviroReporter.com up and running properly. It’s just at times like these that kind words remind Denise Anne and I why we do what we do. And now that we are in our eleventh year reporting on the lab, it also reminded us never to take any complements too seriously.

The Santa Susana Field Lab fired over 30,000 rocket tests leaving grossly polluted soil and groundwater

State Keeps Rocketdyne Cleanup Control

In an historic move to maintain California’s control of the costly cleanup of the former Rocketdyne lab in the hills between the Simi and San Fernando valleys, Cal/EPA Secretary Linda Adams said late yesterday that the agency would oppose federal Superfund listing for the radiologically and chemically-polluted 2,850 acre site.

30,000 rocket tests have left the Santa Susana Field Laboratory polluted with chemicals. Radiation remains from dumping, burning and partial meltdowns in 1959 and 1964

The Promised Land

Gov. Schwarzenegger terminates the uncertainty of Rocketdyne cleanup with historic move that keeps California in charge – for now. The long bitter battle of Rocketdyne was resolved on January 15, 2008 with State negotiating highest cleanup standards for intensely-polluted Boeing lab.

Boeing worker shoots a load of water over the debris field to keep asbestos dust down.

Cleaning Up Rocketdyne

The Department of Toxics Substances Control has begun the massive cleanup of a Rocketdyne dump next to Sage Ranch State Park. A trio of environmentalists found a debris field in March 2007 that included blocks of asbestos and pipes lined with antimony. In June, DTSC’s Norm Riley accompanied the citizens to the dump and validated their concerns.

State Senator Sheila Kuehl

Pay Dirt

On October 12 Gov. Schwarzenegger signed SB-990, a bill championed by State Senator Sheila Kuehl to clean up Rocketdyne to Superfund standards. Boeing agreed to pay for remediation and to donate the lab to the State for parkland. Government oversight will be headed by DTSC, and transfer of the 2,850 acre lab to the State is prohibited until cleanup goals are completed.