Comment: So do you really believe the State of Virginia will protect her people from the problems of uranium, Heck No, she will sell out her people for greed just like the article below, Virginia will hide all the truth from us!
August 25, 2009
by Christina MacPherson
50 Years After America’s Worst Nuclear Meltdown
Human error helped worsen a nuclear meltdown just outside Los Angeles, and now human inertia has stymied the radioactive cleanup for half a century.
Miller McCune.com 25 August 09 By: Joan Trossman and Michael Collins August 24, 2009
“……………….from July 12 through July 26, 1959, an unknown amount of radioactive gases were intentionally vented to prevent the Sodium Reactor Experiment from overheating and exploding……………………
“We know there was a fuel meltdown,” said William Taylor, the current spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy. “We don’t know how much [radiation] or if any was released.”
According to an analysis of a five-year study by a panel of independent scientists convened years after the incident, the SRE accident spit out up to 459 times the amount of radiation released during the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island.
Fifty years later, the contaminated site has yet to be cleaned up, although this month two federal agencies promised to plow ahead without the site’s current owner, Boeing. And in March, the Department of Energy provided $38.3 million in funds to complete the radiologic survey of “Area IV” as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Unlike the then-remote hilltop it once was, now more than a half million people live within 10 miles of The Hill, and downtown Los Angeles is 30 miles away.
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory was built on 2,850 acres in the mid-1940s. A portion of the facility was dedicated to nuclear research, while other portions were marked to develop powerful rocket engines such as the Delta II. The federal Atomic Energy Commission and the private Atomics International chose the land high in the hills above the farthest end of the west San Fernando Valley precisely because the work could be dangerous and the population sparse………….
Meanwhile, the SRE was but one of 10 nuclear reactors at the site, plus a “hot lab” to cut apart and work on nuclear fuel for Santa Susana, Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission facilities from around the country. The site also hosted a plutonium fabrication fuel facility which Dan Hirsch, president of the nonprofit anti-nuclear group the Committee to Bridge the Gap, called “perhaps the most dangerous facility they had on the property.”……………………..
The end of 20 years of silence
None of what John Pace described was ever revealed publicly. Atomics International prepared an unclassified report — it was titled “SRE Fuel Element Damage” — on the accident and delivered it to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1961………………….
…………………Once the widespread nature of contamination was known, (over 20 years later) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was brought in to aid in the cleanup. One focus of concern was the level of contamination in the actual power plant buildings…………………
In the early 1990s, local legislators established the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel,…
“They found that the workers had increased death rates from key cancers like lung cancer, cancers of the lymph and blood systems, than did workers at the same facility that had lower exposure to the radiation,” Hirsch said. “That then led our panel to study the offsite population. We needed to know the wind data. And Boeing (now the owner of the site) refused to release it. So we had to draw more general conclusions.”
Those conclusions were released in October 2006 and they were stunning. Based on the ratios of volative radionuclides found in the coolant, the panel estimated that the release of radiation in 1959 was hundreds of times the amount of radiation that was released at Three Mile Island — and that radiation was estimated to have caused between 300-1,800 cancer deaths.
….The big clean: target deadline 2017
Despite all this, the site remains toxic, radioactive and dangerous, and will continue to be so until the cleanup is completed. And it’s still a workplace for scientists and technicians:………………
The future of nuclear energy
As the Obama administration is developing a strategy for the nation’s energy needs, including a nuclear component, there are many environmentalists who see the struggle to clean up the SSFL as an object lesson.
“You know the old saying, ‘Those who cannot remember the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them,” Hirsch said. “People today are not remembering what happened the last time we went deeply into nuclear power. We had meltdowns and horrible accidents that we are spending billions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to clean up.”
Proponents of a nuclear revival say it is part of the answer to reduce the nation’s carbon output. But Hirsch sees that path as a large step backwards. “It’s a tragedy because this could be the point where we really solve the global warming problem.”
Science & Environment Articles Taking Stock After America’s Worst Nuclear Accident Miller-McCune Online Magazine
http://nuclear-news.net/
August 25, 2009
by Christina MacPherson
50 Years After America’s Worst Nuclear Meltdown
Human error helped worsen a nuclear meltdown just outside Los Angeles, and now human inertia has stymied the radioactive cleanup for half a century.
Miller McCune.com 25 August 09 By: Joan Trossman and Michael Collins August 24, 2009
“……………….from July 12 through July 26, 1959, an unknown amount of radioactive gases were intentionally vented to prevent the Sodium Reactor Experiment from overheating and exploding……………………
“We know there was a fuel meltdown,” said William Taylor, the current spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy. “We don’t know how much [radiation] or if any was released.”
According to an analysis of a five-year study by a panel of independent scientists convened years after the incident, the SRE accident spit out up to 459 times the amount of radiation released during the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island.
Fifty years later, the contaminated site has yet to be cleaned up, although this month two federal agencies promised to plow ahead without the site’s current owner, Boeing. And in March, the Department of Energy provided $38.3 million in funds to complete the radiologic survey of “Area IV” as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Unlike the then-remote hilltop it once was, now more than a half million people live within 10 miles of The Hill, and downtown Los Angeles is 30 miles away.
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory was built on 2,850 acres in the mid-1940s. A portion of the facility was dedicated to nuclear research, while other portions were marked to develop powerful rocket engines such as the Delta II. The federal Atomic Energy Commission and the private Atomics International chose the land high in the hills above the farthest end of the west San Fernando Valley precisely because the work could be dangerous and the population sparse………….
Meanwhile, the SRE was but one of 10 nuclear reactors at the site, plus a “hot lab” to cut apart and work on nuclear fuel for Santa Susana, Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission facilities from around the country. The site also hosted a plutonium fabrication fuel facility which Dan Hirsch, president of the nonprofit anti-nuclear group the Committee to Bridge the Gap, called “perhaps the most dangerous facility they had on the property.”……………………..
The end of 20 years of silence
None of what John Pace described was ever revealed publicly. Atomics International prepared an unclassified report — it was titled “SRE Fuel Element Damage” — on the accident and delivered it to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1961………………….
…………………Once the widespread nature of contamination was known, (over 20 years later) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was brought in to aid in the cleanup. One focus of concern was the level of contamination in the actual power plant buildings…………………
In the early 1990s, local legislators established the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel,…
“They found that the workers had increased death rates from key cancers like lung cancer, cancers of the lymph and blood systems, than did workers at the same facility that had lower exposure to the radiation,” Hirsch said. “That then led our panel to study the offsite population. We needed to know the wind data. And Boeing (now the owner of the site) refused to release it. So we had to draw more general conclusions.”
Those conclusions were released in October 2006 and they were stunning. Based on the ratios of volative radionuclides found in the coolant, the panel estimated that the release of radiation in 1959 was hundreds of times the amount of radiation that was released at Three Mile Island — and that radiation was estimated to have caused between 300-1,800 cancer deaths.
….The big clean: target deadline 2017
Despite all this, the site remains toxic, radioactive and dangerous, and will continue to be so until the cleanup is completed. And it’s still a workplace for scientists and technicians:………………
The future of nuclear energy
As the Obama administration is developing a strategy for the nation’s energy needs, including a nuclear component, there are many environmentalists who see the struggle to clean up the SSFL as an object lesson.
“You know the old saying, ‘Those who cannot remember the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them,” Hirsch said. “People today are not remembering what happened the last time we went deeply into nuclear power. We had meltdowns and horrible accidents that we are spending billions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to clean up.”
Proponents of a nuclear revival say it is part of the answer to reduce the nation’s carbon output. But Hirsch sees that path as a large step backwards. “It’s a tragedy because this could be the point where we really solve the global warming problem.”
Science & Environment Articles Taking Stock After America’s Worst Nuclear Accident Miller-McCune Online Magazine
http://nuclear-news.net/
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