This article from Spot.us and Neon Tommy is the culmination of three months of research and reporting. The EPA is currently testing the soil of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a nuclear and chemical facility just north of Los Angeles. The tests are aiming to put to rest a long-simmering controversy as to whether the site’s chemical and radioactive waste are the cause of cancers in workers and area residents. My story goes beneath the controversy to what exactly happened at Santa Susana, the best way forward and what we can learn from it. It was linked to by the LA Times and is on the Chatsworth, CA Patch web site.
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It’s only a 45-minute drive from downtown Los Angeles to reach one of the most toxic hills in the country – a vivid case study of the chaos that ensues when scientific hubris meets corporate carelessness.
Just take the 101 north into Ventura County, take exit 29 and turn left on a winding road that traces the edges of the Simi Hills, a brown, rocky terrain veined with low shrubs.
The road leads past a mobile home park and a few tony housing developments, past a sign that says “No jogging” and to guarded gate – the entrance to the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory. In an ironic nod to past wrongs, a retro-style sign affixed to the gate reads, “Safety does it.”
At the entrance, I met Mary Aycock, a safety specialist with the Environmental Protection Agency. She’s an energetic woman with wide eyes and a loud voice with a Southern lilt.
She quickly ushered me to her car so we could go “see some cool stuff.”
In the 1950s, this 2600-acre mountaintop roared with nuclear reactors, bombarding uranium-238 to make plutonium, a powerful radioactive fuel.
The site’s sodium reactor experiment was the first to generate electricity, briefly, for the nearby city of Moorpark. It was also home to the SNAP-10, the first nuclear reactor to be launched into space.
Back then, the U.S. government pursued nuclear development with few holds barred, anxious to keep pace with the Soviet Union’s nuclear power programs. “This was gonna save the day,” said Christina Walsh, a resident who lives in West Hills at the base of Santa Susana’s mountain. “This was gonna beat the Russians.”
Unfortunately, Santa Susana never beat anyone but itself…