Rocketdyne Company

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 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

Boeing Co. has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit brought by neighbors of its Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, ending an eight-year legal battle over the effect on public health of radioactive and chemical contamination at the lab. Terms of the settlement were reached in September but were not immediately disclosed. They included a confidentiality agreement between Boeing and the remaining 133 plaintiffs in the case.

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.

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.