Thursday, July 22, 2004

LA's Three Mile Island: The Rocketdyne meltdown mess

Bet you haven't heard about our very own Three Mile Island: here.
In 1957, Rocketdyne debuted the nation’s first commercial nuclear reactor, the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE), which supplied electricity to over a thousand folks in the then-tiny town of Moorpark. The SRE experienced a partial meltdown in the summer of 1959, in which a third of the reactor core melted and lethal radioactive gases spewed from the unfortified building.

The SRE partial meltdown released 15 to 260 times more radiation to the surrounding environment than did Three Mile Island, according to the Santa Barbara-based law firm of Capello & Noël.
Glad someone is following up on this since I don't expect to see hide nor hair of this in the other local paper, the LATimes.