Kashiwazaki Nuclear Disaster Reminiscent of our Santa Susana Field Laboratory?

On July 16th, 2007, an earthquake of a magnitude 6.8 rocked Kashiwazaki, Japan. "Radioactive material leaked undetected for days at an earthquake-battered nuclear power plant even as the utility was assuring the public that the damage posed no danger to those outside the site, company executives acknowledged yesterday." Eric Talmadge: (The following appeared on Boston.com Headline: Nuclear plant leak had gone unnoticed Date: July 20, 2007).

Government inspectors found radioactive iodine venting from an exhaust pipe at the plant's No. 7 nuclear reactor. Earlier this week officials announced that 315 gallons of radioactive water had leaked into the ocean. About 400 barrels containing low levels of radioactive waste were knocked over by the quake. It was reported that lids fell off about 40 of those barrels. This power plant has been plagued by problems, and recent earthquakes in Japan have made Kashiwazaki's local residents file lawsuits about the approval of building the nuclear reactor so near to their homes. A three story transformer building was charred from top to bottom there because of a fire caused by the earthquake.

Japanese government officials have said that these radioactive releases were not great enough to harm the environment or to be dangerous to public health. That cannot be said about the radiation releases at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) also known as Rocketdyne. Most Americans are unaware that we have had similar accidents at nuclear plants in the United States.

Many of us who are in our 50's and 60's remember the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident. On March 28,1979, a pressure valve in a pressurized water reactor suddenly malfunctioned at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This accident would later be known as the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history.

The second worst nuclear disaster in the United States was at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. This site is in the densely populated hills above the San Fernando Valley which is part of Los Angeles, California. Local residents were aware of rocket testing there, but many were unaware that there had been an uncontained nuclear reactor on this site.

Recent documents released last year by Boeing, the current owners of the SSFL, have indicated a cover up of many partial meltdowns at the site. The first was during a sodium reactor experiment on July 13, 1959. Documents show later reactor malfunctions 1964 and 1969 as well.

Radioactivity at the SSFL has resulted from: "The operation of ten reactors and seven criticality test facilities, fuel fabrication, reactor and used fuel disassembly activities, small scale laboratory work, and onsite storage of nuclear material. Nine of the ten reactors operated at power levels below one megawatt (1 MW). The ten reactors and criticality test facilities have all been dismantled and removed from the SSFL [Oldenkamp and Mills, 1991]. There have been nine radiological incidents at the SSFL."

California State Senator Sheila Kuehl has been working on California Senate bill SB 990 for a number of years the purpose of which is to cleanup the radioactive waste that remains onsite from these accidents. "The purpose of SB 990 is to get SSFL cleanup pursuant to Superfund standards going now before the site is released for general use" according to Senator Kuehl. Senator Kuehl has been fighting the lobbying efforts of Boeing to block her efforts to pass a similar bill for a number of years.(http://www.dist23.casen.govoffice.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={71764610-D318-41BD-A5F2-30DBF6195604}

On May 2, 2007, U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti ruled that the Department of Energy violated federal law by failing to properly clean up the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif. The Department of Energy is responsible for the cleanup of the radioactive waste at this site. Judge Conti also ordered the Department not to transfer or relinquish control of any portion of the site until more in-depth environmental study is completed.

Many local residents are unaware of the environmental and public health tolls that activities at the SSFL have caused. Employees have filed lawsuits which have been settled in undisclosed amounts. Nearby residents and other employees with health concerns cite studies on cancer frequencies that are greater the closer that you live to the lab.

One concern is that Boeing wants to clean up what some activists say is less than 1% of the radioactive waste on the site. Boeing then wants to sell the site to be used for single family residences.

Other health hazards at the SSFL include the deliberate dumping and incineration of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals at the site. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which oversees chemical pollution cleanup at Rocketdyne, detected high levels of perchlorate in an artesian well at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, a Jewish education camp less than mile north of Rocketdyne. Shocking readings of 140 and 150 parts per billion (ppb) were found at the well. California’s acceptable level for the contaminant is currently 4ppb. The DTSC has indicated that some toxic chemicals are trapped between layers of rock as many as hundreds of feet below ground. The question is whether these toxic chemicals can remain locked where they are trapped, or will another earthquake like the 1994 Northridge Earthquake open fissures which will allow them to move?

Boeing wants to further cleanup the SSFL by dismantling the remaining two buildings on site. They want to break the buildings which are below the ground into blocks which will then be trucked to a Nevada toxic waste area.

The SSFL site, and the knowledge that we have of the kinds of things that our government will cover up, should make us think twice before we allow the building of any nuclear reactors in the United States. The Japanese Earthquake has shown us that we need to think twice about the long term safety of storing any toxic or radioactive waste near active fault lines. And we need to demand that our government takes the adequate steps to insure the health and safety of all of its citizens.

A new presidential administration under AL GORE would not make the EPA impotent
to create a Superfund for the SSFL. We need AL GORE to become our president, and to make appointments for his cabinet based on science not on cronyism. We know that Al would not find it acceptable that the agency formed to protect environmental health is not capable of doing so.