Rocketdyne Company

Federal agents are investigating whether two Rockwell International Corp. scientists killed in an explosion last year were actually blowing up toxic waste rather than conducting valid rocket fuel tests, government officials said Friday. Burning off unneeded rocket fuel chemicals would violate federal environmental laws and breach cleanup contracts that paid Rockwell more than $1 million, the officials said.

Just past Barstow on Interstate 15, Las Vegas-bound travelers can eye a tower resembling a lighthouse rising out of the desert encircled by more than 1,800 mirrors the size of billboards. The complex is often mistaken for a science fiction movie set, but it is actually a power plant that once used molten salt, water and the sun's heat to produce electricity.

The lead singer for Motley Crue has sued Boeing North American Inc. claiming that his daughter's death by cancer in 1995 was caused by radioactive material dumped in the soil and ground water near his former home near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Vince Neil and his ex-wife, Sharise, bought a home in Chatsworth in 1991, a few miles east of Boeing's Rocketdyne Division. Boeing acquired the property in 1996 when it bought Rockwell International's aerospace and defense businesses.

Boeing Co. obtained a revised permit Thursday for handling rainwater runoff at its heavily contaminated and now shuttered nuclear power and rocket-testing lab in the hills above Simi Valley, despite heated protests from environmentalists. The revisions, which were unanimously approved by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, essentially lowered the risk of Boeing getting fined for exceeding mandated contamination levels of storm runoff.

After decades of questioning over the long-term health effects of a nuclear accident at an energy research lab near Simi Valley, a team of scientists today will release the results of several studies that promise some answers. The report should provide unbiased proof of the dangers the lab's neighbors faced after a partial meltdown of a test reactor in 1959 released radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere, said Dan Hirsch, co-chairman of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel.

Rocketdyne workers who were exposed to radiation during decades of nuclear testing at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Simi Valley have an increased risk of dying of cancer, according to a UCLA report released Thursday. Rocketdyne immediately criticized the report through a panel of scientists who reviewed it, and called its conclusions overly broad. "Their data doesn't support their conclusions," said Michael Ginevan, a biostatistician who reviewed the study for Rocketdyne.

Neighbors of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory sued the aerospace firm's parent company in federal court Monday, alleging that decades of nuclear and chemical research at the mountaintop complex poisoned their land and water and gave them cancer. Ten plaintiffs from Simi Valley and the San Fernando Valley filed a class-action suit against Boeing North American Inc., which in December bought the 2,668-acre research complex that its Rocketdyne division still runs.

Boeing Co. said Tuesday that it had agreed to sell its Rocketdyne rocket engine manufacturing business in San Fernando Valley to United Technologies Corp. for about $700 million in cash. The sale of storied Rocketdyne, which helped pioneer space exploration in the 1960s, was expected, and came amid Boeing's struggle to turn a profit in the space launch business. For Hartford, Conn.

A federal appeals court has refused to intervene in a class-action lawsuit against Rocketdyne, which is accused of damaging neighboring properties with rocket-engine and nuclear research at its Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The failure of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to decertify a class-action suit against Boeing North American, Rocketdyne's parent company, means that lawyers can mail up to 500,000 letters notifying potential members of the class.

Hoping to sway a federal judge, a group of Rocketdyne neighbors is taking a second stab at turning litigation against the aerospace giant into a class-action lawsuit. In October, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins shot down the neighbors' first attempt, saying the scope of their lawsuit for property damage was too broad to meet the exacting demands of class-action law.

U.S. Department of Labor officials will be in Simi Valley next week to conduct information sessions for current and former workers of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory seeking information about federal compensation and medical benefits for those who became ill as a result of working at the former nuclear research facility.

Stung by a federal judge's ruling that its cleanup was inadequate, the Department of Energy announced Thursday that it was temporarily halting plans to raze several buildings at its former nuclear and rocket engine testing facility near Simi Valley while it evaluates the cleanup. State and federal politicians had complained that the DOE was continuing the work at Boeing's Rocketdyne Field Laboratory, despite U.S.

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) has introduced a bill to speed up federal benefit payments to former workers of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory who can link their illnesses to their jobs at the onetime Department of Energy facility. In the last seven years, 355 former employees have filed 677 benefit claims against the DOE, but only 56 claims have been paid, according to Gallegly's office. The claims were filed under the Energy Employees Illness Compensation Act.

Environmental activists won a major victory Wednesday when a judge declared that the U.S. Department of Energy continues to violate federal law in its cleanup of nuclear and chemical contamination at Boeing's Rocketdyne field laboratory near Simi Valley. U.S.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it would reconsider whether to add Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Simi Valley to the federal Superfund cleanup list. The agency, which has assessed portions of the former rocket- and nuclear-testing facility since 1980, has decided for the first time to analyze the entire 2,800-acre hilltop lab.

Concerned about the findings in a new environmental study, lawmakers and activists renewed their call Friday for stricter cleanup standards at a former nuclear and rocket engine testing site near Simi Valley. An independent panel of scientists and environmental experts reported this week that emissions from a 1959 nuclear accident at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory may have caused hundreds of cancers in surrounding communities "over a period of many decades."

A 1959 nuclear meltdown at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Chatsworth released far more radiation than was previously known and likely contributed to some area residents developing deadly cancers and other illnesses, according to experts hired by the plaintiffs in a lawsuit pending against the lab's operator. A representative for Rocketdyne's parent company, Boeing Co., called the experts' findings little more than speculation.

On the eve of a trial that would have questioned whether ground water pollution resulted from decades of radioactive and chemical testing at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Lab, the aerospace firm Thursday quietly settled a lawsuit filed against it by the Brandeis-Bardin Institute.

Radioactive emissions from a 1959 nuclear accident at a research lab near Simi Valley appear to have been much greater than previously suspected and could have resulted in hundreds of cancers in surrounding communities, according to a study released Thursday. Chemical contamination from rocket engine testing at the site continues to threaten soil and groundwater in the area around Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, the study also found.

After decades of questioning over the long-term health effects of a nuclear accident at an energy research lab near Simi Valley, a team of scientists today will release the results of several studies that promise some answers. The report should provide unbiased proof of the dangers the lab's neighbors faced after a partial meltdown of a test reactor in 1959 released radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere, said Dan Hirsch, co-chairman of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel.