All Entries Tagged With: "Santa Susana Field Laboratory"
City of LA to Feds – Clean up SSFL
The Los Angeles City Council votes unanimously to demand that NASA clean its polluted 450 acres at the Santa Susana Laboratory to background levels of radiation and chemical contamination. The victory comes courtesy of Councilmen Mitch Englander and Dennis Zine, two Republicans who aren’t fooled by NASA’s crafty maneuvering and Boeing’s meltdown makeover. Activists in city hall rejoice in victory which could save Los Angeles River from decades more pollution sluicing off the former Rocketdyne lab, site of three partial meltdowns and astronomical radiological and chemical contamination.
EnviroReporter’s 2012 Year in Review
2012 was a banner year for EnviroReporter.com’s in-depth investigations of Fukushima, Rocketdyne, Runkle Canyon, fracking, perchlorate and a host of controversial environmental issues. New Media technology helped propel site’s coverage to new levels of investigative journalism excellence as scandal after scandal are exposed by the multi-award winning news website.
Greenwashing Rocketdyne
Boeing’s meltdown makeover begins with a media campaign aimed to convince the press and public that the polluted Santa Susana Field Laboratory is clean enough right now for a park. To wipe away memories of decades of meltdowns, chemical and radiation dumping, spilling and burning, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, Gary Polakovic, crafts a plan to sell the “a site with a sordid past to one with potential.” Only problem: the secret plan to snow Southern California media and movers and shakers that Rocketdyne is clean is now revealed by EnviroReporter.com and the Los Angeles Daily News.
Boeing’s Meltdown Makeover
EnviroReporter.com exposes Boeing’s meltdown makeover in this five-part expose. Boeing hires a former LA Times writer, Gary Polakovic, to craft a plan selling the contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory as clean enough for a park. Thousands of pages of documents, reports, interviews, e-mails, photographs and surveillance video of demolition at the site reveal a vast Boeing meltdown makeover. New information shows the lab more radioactive than ever with a polluter-pliant government subverting its own $41.5 million radiation study.
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.
The Road to Runkle
California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, in a sleight of land, has negotiated a deal with KB Home that would leave the 1,595-acre property virtually unremediated for radioactive and chemical contamination while the adjacent 2,850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory would be extensively cleaned up to background levels. Some Simi Valley residents, led by the Radiation Rangers, are wondering why what’s good enough for Rocketdyne isn’t good enough for Runkle.
Rocketdyne Romper Room
EnviroReporter.com weeds out disgruntled Rocketdyne commenters freshly aroused by new LA Weekly article “Rocketdyne Cleanup Won’t Help Runkle Canyon.” What once were anonymous comment posters now find themselves on the receiving end of being outed. New technology finds function illumninating the phonies that are lighting up the Weekly‘s comment page.
Sleight of Land
Lost in the glow of an historic deal to clean up the sprawling Santa Susana Field Laboratory is the fact that the cleanup will stop at the edge of the property line and not include controversial Runkle Canyon which shows signs of being polluted by the same radiation and chemicals that the old Rocketdyne lab it abuts has been contaminated with.
The Right Thing to Do
A celebration of forty years of nuclear watchdog activism by Dan Hirsch’s Committee to Bridge the Gap brings out a Who’s Who of environmentalists recently. CBG’s numerous ‘David versus Goliath’ victories are recounted as Hirsch issues a new call to veteran activists to act now to save the planet.
Atomic Avenger
Bonnie Klea is the Atomic Avenger, an American who has taken her considerable skills and perseverance to fight for the rights of the nation’s nuclear workers many of which have suffered terribly for the work they performed at the height of the Cold War. Klea exemplifies what a real American hero does when faced with insurmountable odds — get cracking! Her efforts are now paying off, literally, to the tune of millions of dollars of compensation for America’s nuclear cowboys who rode on the edge of radiation technology which sometimes exacted a terrible toll.
Riley’s Revenge
Former Rocketdyne toxics chief, Norman E. Riley, blasts Department of Toxics Substances Control as an agency “where obfuscation, abdication of authority, collusion, and other contemptible behaviors currently trump honesty and integrity.” In a fiery e-mail to EnviroReporter.com, Riley admits misleading community regarding Runkle Canyon and that no public comments about cleanup plan were used.
Double Vision
Fifty years after America’s worst nuclear meltdown 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory’s “Sodium Reactor Experiment,” the government’s just-sacked head of lab remediation says the new Rocketdyne cleanup law is too strict and that site owner Boeing is going to sue the State over the standards. New Miller-McCune article and exclusive interviews.
Corn on the Coca
The Coca complex was involved with several missile programs including Navaho, Atlas, J-2, Saturn V second Stage Battleship (five J-2s), Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), and Delta IV Expendable Launch Vehicle Tanks. Within the 141-acre Group 4, which Coca Area shares with Delta Area and the Propellant Load Facility, there are a number of chemicals that Boeing and NASA are responsible for remediating. They include volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including trichloroethylene or TCE, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), metals, and dioxins.
Bravo Beauty
This ethereal photograph from December 12, 1960 shows a rocket test at the Bravo test stand on NASA’s part of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The golden tones and aquamarine color make this previously unpublished photograph one of the most awe-inspiring images we’ve ever seen of a rocket test at the lab.
EnviroReporter.com’s Runkle Canyon Comments Analysis
Will new Department of Toxic Substances Control leadership in Runkle Canyon mean that DTSC will actually take citizen and media concerns seriously over development of this property that borders the nuclear area of Rocketdyne? EnviroReporter.com analyzes what the department has previously ignored as we conclude our seven-part series “Railroading Runkle Canyon?”
The Aerospace Runkle Canyon Comments
D’Lanie Blaze questions developer KB Home’s use of controversial lab Dade Moeller & Associates to retest Runkle Canyon for strontium-90. Blaze reminds then-Department of Toxic Substances Control project head, Norm Riley, that Dade Moeller himself claimed that he’s “just not worried about radiation exposure because of the likelihood that we’ll soon have a cure for cancer.” Blaze burns DTSC over issue and questions if the Response Plan is a “dog and pony show.”
Cleanup Rocketdyne Runkle Canyon Comments
Walsh’s 13 pages of “Comments on the Runkle Canyon Response Plan” include photographs and maps. This well-crafted document clearly illustrates Walsh’s concerns about the canyon. Her expertise and ability to crunch numbers, analyze data, and conceptualize how it all stacks up in the grand scheme of things are remarkable.
Coup de Goo
As we continue our “Railroading Runkle Canyon?” series, the Department of Toxic Substances Control replaces Rocketdyne and Runkle Canyon’s cleanup project manager criticized by the Radiation Rangers in the series. Surprise move shocks community reeling from simultaneous revelations that Boeing has not signed off on the cleanup agreement that will cost hundreds of millions.
Runkle and the Rule of Law
“What is the purpose of us going to all that work trying to get to the bottom of this if it’s going to be ignored?” said “The Good Reverend John” Southwick, one of the Radiation Rangers. “This is serious business. Each and every one of our points is based in sound science and must be addressed by the department when DTSC gives KB Home the marching orders to clean up Runkle Canyon.”
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.”
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.”
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
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.
Perjure Away Pollution in Runkle Canyon?
EnviroReporter.com has discovered evidence that Boeing-supplied documents contain false data as it pertains to Runkle Canyon, which calls into question whether additional sampling and testing in Runkle Canyon may be necessary to fully and accurately investigate the nature of the contamination and its source.
