On March 8 this year, KCBS TV Channel 2 in LA ran a story, “Concerned Parents Call For Full Cleanup of Toxic Santa Susanna Site.” Today it is still unclear who should clean up Santa Susanna, and what health problems it may have caused in surrounding communities. Atomics International told workers like John Pace to keep their mouths shut, and kept the meltdown from the public for decades. More radiation was released subsequently, blowing in the wind wherever. But this was hardly the end of the story. The reactor didn’t fully shut down until July 23. “They tried to make sure it was blowing towards the Pacific Ocean, instead of the San Fernando Valley, so it would affect fewer people.” Pace recalls that the exercise took place every day, sometimes twice a day… the greatest concern among officials was which way the wind was blowing.” Pace told Mangano:

“Each day for the next two weeks,” Mangano reported, ” radiation in the holding tanks was gradually released into the air. They still didn’t know how much radiation we were dealing with-the (radiation) monitors went clear off the scale.” “Starting the of the second day of the meltdown holding tanks (which hold radioactive releases until they are released into the environment) were full. John Pace, a worker in the reactor, remembers – But instead of keeping it closed Atomics International ordered it restarted, meltdown and all, throughout the month. Operators couldn’t shut down the reactor until the next day.

“temperatures climbed to levels much greater than during any of the other previous tests… A blazing-hot bull in a china shop now existed in the (nuclear) core… The fuel rods containing uranium pellets began to melt and large amounts of radioactive gases were formed.” In his 2012 book, Mad Science, author Joseph Mangano, director of the Radiation and Public Health Project ( ) describes these events: One of them became the first nuke to produce electricity for a US municipality, Moorpark in 1957.īut on July 12, 1959, an experimental trial at another reactor went terribly wrong. Over those years 10 such experimental “low power” reactors, operated by Atomics International, ran them. Santa Susanna became a site for developing US commercial nuclear reactors in the 1950s. July 2017 marks 58 years since this little known catastrophe, which occurred in July 1959 at the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory in Southern California’s Ventura county, not many miles north of LA county. Wikipedia characterizes the meltdown as “the worst in US history” and asserts “the radioactive releases are thought to be much more than at Three Mile Island in 1979.”Īnd where? Less than 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles and less than 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean. The worst meltdown in our history? And we’ve never heard of it? Santa Susanna Lab in Ventura County Suffered Meltdown 58 Years Ago

Santa susana reactor meltdown