50 YEARS AFTER AMERICA’S WORST NUCLEAR MELTDOWN
The Nuclear Regulatory Agency has received applications from 14 companies to build new nuclear power plants. Financial problems in the form of cost overruns, delays and other problems had forced utilities to abandon earlier plans to build more nuclear power plants in the 1990s. The issue of terrorism has not yet been fully addressed. The federal government is anxious to solve the intractable problem of the disposal of nuclear waste. Today, most of the operating reactors simply have their spent fuel rods sitting temporarily but indefinitely in holding tanks. The U.S. still has no permanent facility for all of the country’s spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste.
Whether the SSFL will finally be cleaned up within the negotiated schedule remains an open question. Fifty years have passed since that first press release told the world about a close brush with disaster just outside Los Angeles. Today, radiation remains on and off the premises, outliving a generation of workers.
WRITTEN BY:
JOAN TROSSMAN BIEN AND MICHAEL COLLINS
Joan Trossman Bien, a freelance reporter living in Southern California, has worked as a newswriter for nearly every TV station in Los Angeles and now contributes regularly to the Ventura County Reporter and Ventana Monthly. Michael Collins of EnviroReporter.com is an award-winning investigative journalist who has covered the Santa Susana Field Laboratory since 1998.
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