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

I'd love to see Radioactive Drew visit this place.

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

Thank you for all your hard work. It is appreciated. It is informative and entertaining, a wonderful way to present an important part of the human story.

I'm beginning to think the Fallout video games series are a reflection of real life events. Specifically Robco, REPCONN Aerospace, and the many other industries that lacked oversight and environmental safety standards.

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!

Thank you for sharing reality 🙏 about the gray of history ....some one seen gallfly inside others' eyes 👀 but don't see a tree branch inside his eyes.

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.

Evil corporations maximizing profit over safety😂 if the government cared about the environmental impact and public safety they would provide assistance with the clean up instead of just passing a law forcing the company to pay for it.

Can you talk about the defense of Florida during the Cold War, and how Florida was to be defended in case of a Soviet invasion of the Florida peninsula via Cuba? Just asking, as you previously did a video on the defense of Alaska? Thanks!!

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)

I guess I'm one of the few viewers that already knew of this site's history of incidents.

Some time ago I did some statistical work on risk factors in reactor incidents, regaldless of country the three highest risks were experimental design, plutonium production designs, and striving for efficiency. Santa Susanna typified the first two risks, whilst Chernobyl and other RBMK incidents typified the second two.

I actually live around 6-7 miles from this site. When the Woolsey Fire came in 2018, there was some serious concern over what could happen if that site was consumed by the fire.

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

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

Thanks!

Is sodium cooling similar Chernobyl?

🇺🇸

It's shocking how many obvious warning signs that something is wrong people will keep ignoring.

JIGGLING IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE 'FIX' TO PART OF A NUCLEAR REACTOR.

where have you been? it is a continual piece in the news even today!!!!

👍

When the government delegates research, it can wash its hands of any liability. An accident happens, a company just declares bankruptcy and gives its board a nice payout. It's easier to hide from responsibility, something much more difficult for the government to do.

It’s a Super Fun site!

This place sounds like Black Mesa

Yes!!! I love finding channels like this with so much content and hasnt blown up yet

Oh Susana

You have a funny definition of the work Disaster. Big nothingburger.

Let me get this straight, their solutions to a malfunctioning nuclear reactor were to turn it off and back on and to “jiggle it”.

The united states unleahsed radiological harm upon its own land and people in the name of weapons manufacturing and fear mongering. Over all those decaceds the USSR and all the other dominos used 0 nuclear weapons on us. When will we talk about the harm done by this country's military to itself

That North American logo looks a bit 1940ies-Germany-ish??

Boeing certainly has a history of lowering standards to save money.

Everyone advocating for nuclear power generation conveniently ignores the alarmingly long list of accidents.
"Oh but that couldn't happen" they all say, and yet it did happen, many times, and is still happening. Just because we don't hear about it on the nightly news doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Renewables have their own set of problems of course, but solar and wind farms don't render the surrounding areas uninhabitable when there's an accident, and they don't produce thousands of tons of radioactive waste requiring expensive and dangerous storage solutions (that require decades of maintenance, which is inevitably neglected, leading to further contamination).
I'm not scaremongering about radiation, I fully understand it's not as dangerous as some would claim, but why bother with it when we have completely viable alternatives that are far less risky? I guess that's why no new reactors are being built and many existing ones are being decommissioned. The end of nuclear power generation will come about not because of health and environment concerns but because it has become too expensive. That's quite ironic when you consider that back in the 1950s nuclear power was being touted as "so cheap it's effectively free". Lol.

Radio active decay contamination has never had the respect it requires. oops we miss placed our Strontium 90.

I feel like theres more to SSFL than we know... those cold war towers run all the way to Sylmar & noticable from pretty much any point. At the height of the Boeing discourse about cleaning it. I've seen EPA testing rain run off at corners in some streets.

environmental destruction

More environmental damage has been done in the name of national security than any other reason or purpose.

The reason why you don't see many government sites listed in environmental damage listings is because the government just slaps the label "classified" on it.

Issues created by Government Corporatism blamed on "Capitalism"... as usual.

Shared.

More fear mongering radiophobia nonsense (literally nothing about this incident is "secret"), presented as usual without a single quantifiable number for the amount of radiation released. Well here's one for you, the MAXIMUM credible offsite dosage to any individual living in the vicinity at the time is estimated at 0.1 millirem. That's the equivalent of about one third of one single day's natural background radiation exposure. But yeah, in an era when 60+% of the population was huffing down a pack of unfiltered camels a day, I'm sure your great aunt's brother's girlfriend's daughter's stomach cancer was DEFINITELY caused by this trace of a trace of radiation that may or may not have wafted thorough the neighborhood for a few days well over half a century ago. 🙄😒

Wazzup 😊

Can we get a check that those cancer numbers are
a) actually statistically significant and
b) not the result of p-hacking?

4 years of college and 2 years nuclear science. Job description - Nuclear Rod Jiggler.

Totally brand new to me. Thank you for sharing

For decades the population has been growing in the area.

Regarding the enormous burgundy leather(ette?)-bound book on your desk: Does the title read «Советский электротехнический словарь» (Sovetskij elektrotekhnicheskij slovar'), or "Soviet Electrotechnical Dictionary"?

and Bill Gates is now building a sodium cooled reactor in Wyoming - the claim is it will save the climate - over a billion public dollars will be used to prop up the project

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

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.

A neighbor dropped in. Have you missed me. I just moved to ventura county . I ask where. He said
Bell canyon. I said how close to thr rocket dyne fence. He said 5 houses didn't the real estate agent or the title insurance people warn you. Of what he said. That there was a nuclear accident in 1959. His eyes almost popped out of his head. He turned and ran full speed down all 88 steps . I never saw him again. I wonder what happened. If he had not run off I was going to offer to come by with my PUG7 with its lollipop and check his home and yard. A few years later I ask a dirt contractor why he would take job at the end of Sherman way. Likely in a warm zone. I needed the money he said.

My mother was living in Chatsworth when this happened...