"Radioactivity levels during the accident went off-scale," said Dan Hirsch, a spokesman for the antinuclear group Committee to Bridge the Gap. "We thus do not know to this day how much radioactivity was released."
Details of the incident were not disclosed until 1979, when a group of UCLA students discovered documents and photographs that referred to a problem at the site involving a "melted blob."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, July 14, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 43 words Type of Material: Correction
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.
Ever since, residents have worried about downstream health risks associated with soil contaminated by years of rocket and nuclear testing.
Radioactive emissions from the accident could have resulted in 260 to 1,800 cases of cancer within 62 miles of the site over a "period of many decades," according to a study released in 2006.
Boeing officials disputed the findings, saying the study was based on miscalculations and faulty information. They cited a Boeing-commissioned study released in 2005 that found overall cancer deaths among employees at the field lab and at Canoga Park facilities between 1949 and 1999 were lower than in the general population.
A Boeing official said the company was committed to a timely and thorough cleanup of the site in a way that protects public health.
Half a century after the accident, nuclear cleanup operations and chemical decontamination remain incomplete.
The lab was opened on a craggy plateau in easternmost Ventura County in 1948 as the nearby San Fernando and Simi valleys were on the cusp of a postwar population boom.
Scientists at the site, originally operated by North American Rockwell, conducted nuclear research for the federal government for more than four decades before ceasing those operations in the late 1980s.
Home to 10 nuclear reactors and plutonium- and uranium carbide-fabrication plants, it has also been the site of more than 30,000 rocket engine tests, the thunderous explosions serving as a Cold War-era hallmark for nearby residents.
Old-timers still talk about being alarmed by experiments that lighted up the night sky, shook the ground and cracked windows.
Under a court order, the Department of Energy is preparing an environmental impact statement on a proposed cleanup operation.
Senate Bill 990, which took effect last year, requires Boeing, the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA to clean the property to levels suitable for residential and agricultural use.
"I have wasted three decades of my life trying to get them to clean up the mess they made," Hirsch said, "and we are still at least a decade away."
"That tells us," he added, "that a nuclear reactor can become a radioactive mess in minutes and can take decades to clean up.
"We should approach this technology with substantial trepidation."
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louis.sahagun@latimes.com
