Old news, but personally interesting because I spent some time working at the labs up there. The building I worked in was across the street from where the meltdown occurred. Even the building I was in had a history of nuclear accidents (at least three that required cleanup). Nobody ever used the tap water there for anything other than flushing a toilet. Boeing got the property when it acquired Rocketdyne. Boeing was stupid to not recognize the huge liability it took on.
I hope we're measuring and disseminating dose rate and dose rate hazard information these days. I hate that I ctrl-f these kinds of articles for mSv (measure of radioactive dose) and never find it.<p>The reactor type they were testing there is actually super interesting. It was a liquid metal cooled reactor (LMR) with slow neutrons. We have made lots of fast-neutron LMRs, but only a tiny handful of slow-neutron LMRs. They're interesting because they get the neutronics efficiencies of slow neutrons (e.g. they can start up and operate with very low enriched uranium) while also getting the benefits of cooling with liquid metal (low-pressure passive safety, high temperature heat, low corrosion, single phase flow).<p>It's my favorite reactor type actually. The SRE in LA was the prototype for the Hallam reactor in Nebraska.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Nuclear_Power_Facility" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Nuclear_Power_Facility</a>
The sixty-year old nuclear disaster and toxic spills that still almost no one knows about due to decades of cover ups, in the vicinity of residential areas to the west of Los Angeles. Comparable to Three Mile Island, but built in a rickety warehouse with no containment.<p>How many folks died from cancer as a result? I personally have known quite a few, but hard to say definitively.
Grew up nearby, I just assumed everyone was used to rocket engine tests so loud that things world fall off the shelves.<p>Later in life would drive up there and park facing the San Fernando valley to drink beer, awesome view.<p>Only later did I learn these were irradiating activities.
Related: <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265931X21002277" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02659...</a><p>This shit was supposed to be cleaned up 5 years ago.
This event, and everything around SS, was just par for the nuke industry.<p>Forbidding staff from warning their families about contamination was typical evil.<p>There is never any expectation that any nuke project will do better, absent strict regulation and rigorous enforcement. It is why the public is very sensibly sour on nukes.<p>But the only thing stopping more of it, today, is that they cost way more than alternatives. Always did, but it is harder now to paper over.
When I bought my house in Los Angeles (in the southern part of the San Fernando Valley, not particularly close to the accident site), in 2005, the closing documents I had to sign had disclosures about the accident.
Well-known event.[1] Some release of Kr-85 (half life 11 years) and Xe-133 (half life 5 days.) It's been 62 years.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment</a>
One of the better preserved Native American cave paintings in California is within the SSFL security perimeter.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Flats_site" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Flats_site</a>
I live near here. They have built housing on top of the waste drainage area. We tried to protest but it did no good. They say they trucked out the rest of the waste but no one really believes it.
I'm surprised that there are still new cases of people, especially children, who are getting cancer in the area.<p>High cancer rates surrounding the area has been reported for decades and I recall watching local TV news reports about it in the 2000s.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#Medical_claims" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#...</a>