On the morning of July 14, 1959, Sodium Reactor Experiment trainee John Pace received the bad news from a group of supervisors who had, he recalled, "terribly worried expressions on their faces."
A reactor at the Atomics International field laboratory in the Santa Susana Mountains had experienced a power surge the night before and spewed radioactive gases into the atmosphere.
FOR THE RECORD
1959 nuclear meltdown: A headline on an article in Monday's Section A about the first nuclear meltdown in the U.S. said the reactor was in Chatsworth. The reactor was in Ventura County in the Santa Susana Mountains overlooking Los Angeles County, including Chatsworth.
"They were terrified that some of the gas had blown over their own San Fernando Valley homes," recalled Pace, who was 20 at the time. "My job was to keep radiation out of the control room."
Pace set to work sealing doors and windows with clear packing tape and scrubbing the walls with sanitary napkins soaked with special chemicals because, he said, "soap and water wouldn't do the trick."
Today, on the 50th anniversary of America's first nuclear meltdown accident, Pace will join federal regulators and former lab workers in a commemorative gathering at the Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education in Chatsworth.
The group will provide an update of recent developments, including the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to spend $40 million in stimulus funds on a comprehensive radioactive survey of the nuclear site.
"It's about time," said Holly Huff, who was 8 years old when the meltdown occurred a mile from her home.
Standing on a bluff overlooking the 2,850-acre facility, which is now owned by Boeing Co. and NASA, Huff said, "They say it will be cleaned up by 2017 -- I doubt it. We'll wait and see."
In December, Huff was diagnosed with leukemia and thyroid problems, ailments she believes are connected to having been exposed to radioactive gases as a child.
"I find it fascinating," she said, shaking her head, "that a lot of people still don't know what happened here."
In August 1959, about five weeks after the accident, the Atomic Energy Commission published a press release indicating that "a parted fuel element had been observed," a reference to damage. But it added that there was no evidence of radioactive releases or unsafe operating conditions.
"They wanted to keep it secret," Pace said.
Lab officials kept switching the reactor off and on until July 26, when it was shut down and dismantled. There was evidence of melting in a third of the reactor's fuel elements.
For about two weeks, the facility, which employed several thousand people, had been venting colorless and odorless radioactive gas into the environment.
