America's Secret Nuclear Disaster: The Santa Susana Field Laboratory

Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on Santa Susana Field Laboratory, also known Rocketdyne, a nuclear research facility in California that was the location for America's secret nuclear disaster.

#ColdWar #Nuclear #Disaster

[christopherconard]

Back when the Superfund sites were being created my father noticed something odd about them. They were all former private industrial locations, or municipal waste disposal sites. No joint corporate/federal locations or federal controlled areas like military bases were listed. He'd been career navy and knew every base had places you didn't want to spend time at. It had been common practice to get rid of extra "stuff" by either tossing it in a burn pit or burning it in an oil drum. As long as it wasn't too noxious or no one immediately got sick, no one cared. If on a ship it was common to just toss it overboard. Not on your boat, not your problem.

[rinrat]

As a 30+ year environmental professional, I say well done. I have seen the results of "dump it and it goes away" in the far north (DEW Line site), and the casual handling of vast quantities of what's now hazardous material and waste is amazing.

[davidwhiteford]

I was 4 months old and my family lived 1/2 mile from the site when the disaster happened, and because we were never notified we continued to live there for another 10 years. My grandmother died of stomach cancer a few years after the accident, I have no doubt it resulted from drinking the well water! She was truly an awesome person and I still feel the loss. We received nothing from the responsible parties, not even a warning when it happened or an apology since then!

[ham-radio]

i grew up in Burbank. In about 1960 at age 11 I developed a goiter and thyroid cancer. The doctors at UCLA could not understand how a young boy born in 1949 could develope a large thyroid goiter. A few year ago I was diagnosed with the beginnings of Leukemia. DNA tests conducted by Kaiser show that I have DNA that has been damaged. Today I am trying to survive but the outlook is grim. I remember friends of mine dying of cancer in the early 1960's. I blame all of this on thatt site. James Heath

[Вивсівідстій]

The Chalk River nuclear accident in 1953 in Canada also never made headlines.

[Ed_in_Md]

Fascinating. I never heard of this before. Thanks David.

[barrybrevik]

My family moved to Thousand Oaks in 1967, and I have been living in this town ever since. We frequently heard them testing rocket engines at the Santa Susanna site. Those engines must have been incredibly loud, because our location had to be at least 7 miles away by bird.

Around 1978, I met a guy who claimed that his dad had worked at the molten sodium reactor up there, and that was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that there was a nuclear reactor in those hills, but he said nothing about a nuclear accident.

I had never heard of the nuclear accident until around 2015 when I read about it on the internet.

Living here all these years, as well as some family that had been living just off Kuehner Drive (near the nuclear site) since before we arrived; well, it just seems odd that they could keep a secret like that away from the locals for so long.

[tech.noir]

Great no wonder my teeth glow in the dark and my tomatoes are the size of pumpkins

[ekmalsukarno]

To David and the entire Cold War crew, can you please make a video on the history of Thailand during the Cold War. That way, all your viewers and subscribers will learn about Phibun's return to power (Phibun previously governed Thailand during WW2), Thailand's back-and-forth transition between civilian and military governments during the Cold War, as well as the country's lese-majeste laws (laws which basically criminalise negative public attitudes towards the country's royalty and royal institution) which became more strictly enforced during the Cold War. Thank you very much.

[jerrywatt]

The rocket tests shook the whole western SFValley we were in granada hills just outside the nuke reactor danger zone my dad had thyroid cancer in 65 makes me wonder !!

[williamlloyd]

Living near Chatsworth Nature Preserve, located in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California, the Santa Susana test site entrance is just a few miles up the road.
PS — there are several contaminated sites throughout the San Fernando Valley at aerospace facilities where cleaning solvents and oil waste was routinely dumped in pits. Same thing happened in a smaller scale at dry cleaners that used these solvents
PS2 — lowering contamination to level that would allow agriculture is a ridiculous standard. Just tritium contamination in subsurface water flowing toward Simi Valley is problematic. Removal of contaminated rock and soil in the recent past has lowered the risk somewhat. Doubt area will ever be used beyond open space

[unr]

As I recall, as late as 1975 Rocketdyne employees shot barrels of unstable chemicals with rifles causing them to explode thus disposing them.
After work hours of course.

[donalddepew]

Born and raised in the SF valley. Lived about 6 miles as the crow flies from there. I always heard stories about this accident while growing up. The Spawn Ranch where the Charlie Mansion family hung out was just down the hill from there. Used to love to hear and experience the earth shaking rocket engine tests. Rocketdynes factory was about two miles from where we lived. Great Video!

[deanbuss]

I' m glad you share stories like this on THE COLD WAR CHANNEL .
Good nuance to the era.
Thanks David!

[mkamran]

Great Jobs guys, I had no idea about this event. Thanks for bringing this to light

[gregorybirchfield]

I worked there in the mid 90s at the internal fire department. Many of the older employees died of various cancers. Rocket Testing was winding down and environmental cleanup was ongoing. The building that housed the SRE was being demolished with a robot. Interesting place to work at. Lots more went on at the place that was never mentioned and is probably still classified.

[BradSchmor]

I don't know if you'll ever get another chance to name chemicals on your channel, but in case you do: you just say the numbers for the positions on the skeleton, and you don't mention the decimals/commas. For example, 1, 4-dioxane is not "one point four dioxane", it's just "one four dioxane", 1, 1, 1-trichloroethane is "one one one trichloroethane".

[neiloflongbeck]

IIRC the Plainly Difficult channel covered this incident about 4 years ago.

[SparkBerry]

"Pressure excursion" ... from now on, that's what I'll call my farts.

[fyang]

For chemicals with commas in their names (e.g. 1, 2-dichlorobenzene), you don't pronounce the commas (e.g. "one-two-dichlorobenzene"). (and no, these commas are not points)