Nuclear Spill 25 Miles North of Malibu To Be Cleaned Up, Rick Perry Says
Written by 991KBU on October 1, 2019
More than a dozen buildings contaminated with rocket fuel and radioactive residue … 25 miles north of Malibu … will be demolished and the site clean up.
That’s the latest decision from the U-S Department of Energy over the controversial Santa Susana Field Lab … the now abandoned federal research center that operated during the 1950s thru 1990s in the hills north of Calabasas.
Decades of rocket testing … and a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 … left toxins in the soil and groundwater and buildings.
Now … the LA Daily News reports that residents’ demands to clean up the toxic site have resulted in federal action.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced last week that it would demolish 13 of 18 remaining structures, according to a recently released record of decision.
The news about the demolition comes a few weeks after Energy Secretary Rick Perry visited.
But locals say this is not the first federal promise to clean up Santa Susana.
And …. they say that the latest federal promise will “intends to recycle and dump such nuclear waste in places not designed for it, spreading rather than reducing risk.”
That’s the opinion of Denise Duffield, associate director of Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles.
In the 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission, a predecessor agency to DOE, funded nuclear research at Santa Susana.
A total of 10 small reactors were built and operated as part of nuclear research that ended in 1982.
One of them melted down in 1959.
