All Entries Tagged With: "contamination"
HEPA Filters – August 11, 2011
Ten minute interior averages of HEPA filters’ aggregate from 7/19/11 after 23 days of use. All readings are ABOVE background by a significant amount showing that even in sunny Southern California, spared the hot rains rolling across the country and Canada on the jet stream, that substantial radiation is in the air penetrating structures.
Backgrounded
EnviroReporter.com has confirmed through two independent sources that signing of final agreements between the California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA for the cleanup of the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in Simi Valley will happen later today.
Goo-ology
EnviroReporter.com discovers a pathway for pollutants from rocket test stands into the soil and groundwater of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. In the early 1950s, a rocket crew member figured out how to keep rocket exhaust flames from melting the bottom of not only the test stands, but the rock they were standing on: use cascading showers of water to cool the hot zone. The result may have been to massively spread poisonous rocket fuel on a level not previously known. Finding may help explain one major contributing factor at the astronomically polluted lab.
Bowled Over
The old Bowl Test Facility has extremely contaminated soil like much of the rest of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. What sets this rocket testing area apart from the rest of Rocketdyne is that it duplicates the Nazi rocket test stand design for the terrifying V-2 rocket that killed thousands of civilians and soldiers in World War II. Today Bowl sits as a silent and deadly reminder of Southern California’s Nazi-influenced past.
ACME Runkle Canyon Comments
Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education’s founder and director Bill Bowling says that the Runkle Canyon cleanup plan is inadequate and doesn’t address toxic trichlorethylene being found on the property. Bowling calls out city of Simi Valley for not caring about issue and says that developer KB Home has a questionable environmental track record including building on land without removing unexploded bombs from a former bombing range.
Goo To Go
There is an estimated one million cubic yards of contaminated soil on the site, which suffered the worst meltdown in American history in 1959. Over 74,000 truckloads of toxic cargo could rumble through the San Fernando Valley over the lifetime of the cleanup, scheduled for completion in 2017.
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.”
San Fernando Valley’s Galaxy of Goo
LA Department of City Planning rezones former aerospace and nuclear research site in west San Fernando Valley site to chagrin of residents. A February 26 vote codifies lower environmental standards for chemicals, radionuclides and heavy metals found at 81-acre property. Plan determines that no Environmental Impact Report is needed.
Nuke ‘Em High
The mystery of the Brentwood nuclear and chemical dump moved that much closer to solving with the release of the 5,500+ pages of VA documents by Congressman Henry Waxman (D – Los Angeles). Syringes and medical waste including low-level radioactive materials were covered by fill material to depths of twenty to thirty feet or more at the prestigious private school.
Spin Cycle
The City of Simi Valley claims that a Tetra Tech toxics report proves that Runkle Canyon’s water and soil are safe. The Ventura County Star and Simi Valley Acorn have also reported the canyon as “safe” with continued fact-challenged coverage including a false alarm about copper, erroneous cost of the citizens’ test, and incorrect posting status of Rangers report.
