SSFL Area IV
Galleries begin below text.
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory’s Area IV’s extensive radiological contamination is the result of partial meltdowns, accidents, spills along with burning and dumping. Six out of ten experimental reactors suffered major accidents including the 1959 partial meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment, or SRE, which released hundreds of times more of certain types of radionuclides into the environment as did the infamous Three Mile Island meltdown did in Pennsylvania in 1979.
The lasting effects of radiological and chemical contamination at Area IV, and the surrounding communities, are still present today and this section of SSFL is undergoing a characterization and cleanup that will cost hundreds of millions and take until at least 2017. In the process of the fight over Rocketdyne, which began in the late 1980s with revelations of the true extent of the SRE meltdown, workers and residents have died allegedly because of Rocketdyne pollution, and huge fines have been assessed the company that now owns the site, Boeing. Our investigation of this site, begun in early 1998, has documented much of the history of this site which can be accessed at our Rocketdyne Investigation page.
The Department of Energy, or DOE, which is responsible for the cleanup of 90-acre Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC) in Area IV, has created a website that is linked to throughout EnviroReporter.com’s extensive Area IV galleries. DOE estimates that the final cost of remediating ETEC will cost between $167.9 million to $221.4 million.
A gallery containing SSFL Area IV geographic groupings, a DOE ETEC clean-up map, Area IV building locations, and more.
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory's 270-acre Area IV is dominated by the 90-acre Energy Technology Engineering Center where Rocketdyne's nuclear work was performed.
In the 1960’s, the Empire State Atomic Development Authority (ESADA) 1.5-acre site was used primarily for testing piping burst characteristics under sodium water reaction conditions at Building 814. Underground piping connected B814 to a concrete-lined pool just north of B886 at the intensely polluted Sodium Burn Pit. It is possible that the Burro Flats Fault helped transport that sodium down into Runkle Canyon which tests extremely high for salt.
"The [Former Sodium Disposal Facility], otherwise known as the “FSDR” or “Sodium Burn Pit”, was constructed in the early to middle 1950s and used to clean metallic sodium test components via direct contact with water," reads a Department of Energy document on one of the most controversial and contaminated sites in Area IV of Boeing's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, commonly known as Rocketdyne.
The Kinetics Experiment Water Boiler (KEWB) reactor was the first nuclear reactor to be operated at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. It was a small research reactor, using a water solution of uranyl sulfate as its nuclear fuel. Two different cores were used: the first core was a spherical tank, and the second was a cylindrical tank.
SNAP-10A was the only nuclear reactor launched and flight tested by the United States. The reactor was developed under the Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power Program (SNAP) program overseen by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
Photos from a 2004 DOE presentation called "DOE Radiological Activities in Area IV." It described in simplistic terms the lifecycle of a nuclear reactor at SSFL.
Photographs and information about SSFL Area IV buildings 4003, 4005, 4009, 4011 & 4023. From 1957 through 1964, Building 4003 was used to assemble fuel for the Sodium Reactor Experiment. Uranium and thorium metal slugs were loaded into metal tubes, the remaining tube space was filled with sodium, and the tubes were then sealed.
Photographs and information about SSFL Area IV Building 4020, the Hot Lab, where plutonium fuel rods from around the country were cut apart. During reactor test operations, it was often necessary to examine reactor fuel assemblies to determine how they were performing. Built in 1959, this building was dissembled and removed in 1996.
Photographs and information regarding SSFL Area IV Radioactive Materials Handling Facility. “The RMHF was constructed in 1959 and consists of a group of ten buildings which were built to safely handle new and irradiated nuclear fuel,” says the Department of Energy. “RMHF was later used to support the remediation activities and for temporary storage of radioactive and mixed waste."
Photographs and information regarding SSFL Area IV Building 4028 - Shield Test Irradiation Reactor. “Building 4028 was constructed in 1960 to perform tests on space reactor shields,” according to DOE. “The original reactor was the Shield Test Reactor, a 50 kW reactor that operated in a pool of water from 1961 to 1964... From 1977 to 1981, Building 4028 was used to conduct research on the behavior of molten uranium, resulting in radiological impacts to the building."
Photographs and information about SSFL Area IV Buildings 4029, 4030, 4055, 4064, 4093 & 4100. Building 4029 was the Radiation Measurements Facility where, in March, 1964, a radium source was dropped in a storage thimble causing contamination detected 23 years later in 1987.
7 GALLERIES depict the life cycle of the Sodium Reactor Experiment, or SRE, the first nuclear reactor in this country to supply commercially-available electricity. It powered the lights for the then-tiny town of Moorpark in Ventura County, California, population 1,200. The reactor is best known for suffering the worst meltdown in American history, releasing hundreds of times more radiation in the summer of 1959 than the more famous Three Mile Island disaster did twenty years later.
An open gate without signs leads into Area IV in the heights above Runkle Canyon. "ENTS," or Engineered Natural Treatment Systems, are seen here as well as other photographs of the lab's nuclear area. Eleven acres of Area IV drain into Runkle Canyon. It will take several hundred million to remediate this land by the target date of 2017.
