Sodium Reactor Experiment

Overview of the Sodium Reactor Experiment, or SRE, which suffered 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.

These photos are of the 1959 meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Los Angeles California. Several of these photos were taken by worker John Pace who is also seen in many of the images.

Excavations and the building of the reactor's superstructure is seen in these photographs from 1955. Notable are the walls of the SRE's "High Bay" which are not fortified against radiation leaks.

The reactor core housed 43 uranium fuel rods, 13 of which melted in July 1959. Photographs show extensive sodium coolant tubing and the chemical toluene reservoir which would literally goo up the works leading to the partial meltdown.

Miles of tubing went into the elaborate complex of the experimental reactor. The construction indicates that there was no pre-planning for if a nuclear disaster struck the reactor, such as a containment vessel like those on modern reactors.

This gallery includes photos and figures that show the beginning of the dismantling of the SRE. One figure shows a suspected area of contamination under and adjacent the reactor that partially melted in 1959. Highly radioactive core gases were allowed to decay in buried tanks, left, and then released into the environment. During the meltdown, these gases were vented straight into the air so the core wouldn't blow apart.

These photographs of the dismantling of the SRE include shots of workers tearing out re-bar and the foundations of the reactor. Note that the workers have no respirators on to protect against breathing in radioactive particles from the pulverized concrete and surrounding dirt. Iron worker Jim Garner tells a tale of ripping down a reactor building, perhaps the SRE, wearing no more than his construction clothes and hard hat.

Photographs show a number of workers who aren't even donning little caps to keep radioactive dust out of their hair. The last image shows the SRE as an empty hulk. Michael Collins was the last reporter to enter this historic building in the Spring of 1998, accompanied by Boeing's Phil Rutherford who, with Geiger Counter in hand, showed that the ambient radiation was below normal.