October 21, 2025 • 56 mins
Most US residents are vaguely familiar with the nuclear disaster known as Three Mile Island -- but that's only one of several similar stories. Join the guys as they explore the strange events of July 1959, when the Santa Susana Field Laboratory partially melted down -- and the government conspired to cover it up.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realists. We're back with a classic episode. You've
all probably heard about Three Mile Island, but as we
discovered in twenty twenty, that's unfortunately only one of several
similar and equally disturbing stories.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Oh dude, this is rocket Dyne. Oh wow, not until
I read the description, I remember what this is. This
is crazy scary because you know, we hear, as you said,
we hear about some of these big stories, right, but
then there's other stuff happening that has potential implications for
a massive loss of life that just kind of occurs,
(00:36):
and nobody even really knows about it exactly.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
In this episode, we are exploring the events of July
nineteen fifty nine where a little place called the Santa
Susana Field Laboratory partially melted down, and Uncle Sam said.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Sh nobody gots to know about this.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
He shushed it hard. We're gonna have a word from
our sponsors and then we'll jump right into the.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Story from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn this stuff. They don't want you to know.
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Hello and welcome back to the show. My name is Noel.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Our writer Dive Matt Frederick is actually on vacation today.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Control Deck, and most importantly you are here and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
No I was thinking of a way to open this episode,
and I've got to say I thought back on this.
I'd like to get your opinion. For a lot of
people here in the US, the first childhood understanding we
have of nuclear technology doesn't come from a textbook. It
actually comes from The Simpsons. Was that your experience?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Oh? Absolutely. I mean, just like that iconic shape of
those cooling towers, which you used to think, oh, that's
where the nuclear stuff happens, but that's not, in fact
the case. Those are just the cooling towers. But that
iconic Simpson's opening where you trace Homer's activities like from
you know, his seat at the nuclear power plant in
Springfield where he like pushes the button or whatever. I
(02:32):
guess I'm confusing him with George Jetson a little bit,
but it was similar because it was meant to be
like a job any idiot could do kind of sort
of the joke because Homer is sort of this classic
buffoon and then you see that nuclear rod that accidentally
slips into his pocket and then finds its way into
like the baby's crib or something. It's a whole thing
(02:53):
where you kind of trace, you know, the movement of
this nuclear rod through that opening sequence. Yeah, I like what.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I like what you pointed out about how Homer is
a bit of a use the word buffoon. He is
kind of an income poop. He's lovable, but he's definitely oafish.
And despite being one of the dumbest guys in Springfield,
he somehow has a job at a nuclear plant that
routinely experiences low level or even high level disasters. And
(03:23):
interestingly enough, in the show, even though I haven't seen
The Simpsons in a while, a lot of these disasters
never get revealed to the people living in Springfield.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And like the Rods just escape. It's sort of the joke, right,
I mean, it really is kind of lampooning this whole
culture of cover up in American nuclear power, from things
like Three Mile Island to even like you know, Ruther
Russian attempts to contain the disaster at Chernobyl and this
idea that you know, those in power can never be wrong,
(03:52):
and if we say it didn't happen, then it didn't
happen as long as no one finds out right, right.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I bet Monty Burns would probably love the novel nineteen
eighty four just as much as us, but for very
different reasons. So you know, as it turns out, you know,
the things like this can happen in the real world,
but spoiler alert, when they do, they're not near as
(04:17):
funny as a plotline in the Simpsons.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Wait, you mean three eyed fish aren't cuddly, cute little
creatures that just flop around with a smile.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
You know, I have to point out maybe this is
an episode for another day, but I was immensely heartbroken
to learn that when those kind of mutations occur, they
usually don't result in a living animal. Certainly not one
that makes it to adulthood. That's a shame, and.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Certainly not one that's cuddly that you could model like
a plushy toy.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
After right, right, agreed, So we are going somewhere with
this today, Conspiracy Realist. We were inspired to make today's
episode via an email from Wayne C. Wayne C wrote
to us a while back and you said, have you
covered the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory. Is this something you
(05:08):
could cover? And Wayne you go on to mention that
you were surprised, so very few people have heard about this,
and in fact, peep behind the curtain, we had not
heard of this either. So here are the facts.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
The Santa Susanna Field Laboratory is was, let's say, yeah,
I can use past tense in terms of when it
was operational, a massive complex of research and development labs
located in Semi Valley, which is in southern California, and
it has a long history. It really is one of
those classic kind of the Atomic Age kind of you know,
(05:45):
nineteen forties kind of facilities where it was really you know,
the dawning of a new era and all that, and
nuclear power was the wave of the future. So yeah,
it's been operational doing one thing or another since around
nineteen forty seven, two years after the detonation of the
world's first nuclear weapon, an aerospace company called North American
Aviation decided to build a facility located in a rural
(06:09):
part of the hills above Simi Valley and at First,
the purpose of the site was to test rocket engines.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
And they did this for a long time. From nineteen
forty nine to two thousand and six, the US Space
Program routinely used this site to develop and test a
very tricky part of rocketry, which was liquid propellant. Liquid
propellant is some high grade stuff. You know, it's surprised,
(06:39):
it's complicated. It's also very dangerous in terms of the
contaminants that you know, in terms of just the chemicals themselves.
But that's not all they did. As you mentioned Nolan,
nineteen fifty three, under the supervision of the US Atomic
Energy Commission, that's the predecessor of the Department of Energy,
the FEEL Lab. We'll call Santa Susanna s SSFL. For this,
(07:06):
they added something they called Area four, and from nineteen
fifty three to at least nineteen eighty, Area four was
home to nuclear reactors.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
From nineteen sixty six to nineteen ninety eight, the US
government actually sponsored a liquid metal research center at the site.
Does that mean they were making T one thousands ben?
Is that what that means?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
One would hope? I think some of that work is
still probably classified. We don't know, But liquid metals, just
like nuclear materials, just like liquid rocket propellant. Also is
not the kind of stuff you know, you want to
play with. It's not the kind of stuff you want
to see at the bottom of the slide in your
(07:48):
local playground. And you know, speaking of civilian stuff, that's
one interesting part of ss FL. Santa Susanna is only
about seven miles northwest of Canoga Park. It's only thirty
miles northwest of downtown LA, this huge population center.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Yeah, it's true. There's a community called Bell Canyon that
runs across the entire southern border. And here's the thing.
Despite that close proximity to you know, people's homes, into
residential areas, and to schools and churches and libraries for
many people to this day, the site and the activities
that took place inside of it have remained shrouded in mystery. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, Like I said an earlier episode, I think Q Tom,
wait's what's the building in there? You're right, this site
was the home of numerous secret projects that were private
public partnerships. That's pretty common, you know, especially in the
aerospace industry or the nuclear industry. And it sounds crazy
to say, Well, the locals eventually just came to accept
(08:56):
that there was this weird facility on the you know,
on the other side of the park or in town,
and they just went about their daily lives. But we
have to remember, first off, it's crazy how quickly things
become normal. And we also have to remember that this
a lot of this work was occurring throughout the Cold War,
(09:19):
right from the very end of World War Two, so
there's a little bit of patriotism tied up in there.
There's a little bit of you know, people tended to
trust the government more in general, so.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
They were like ruols.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I mean, yeah, no one saw it coming. But because
of that, you know, there's a I think there's a
sense of inherent nationalism there, like we may not know
what they're doing, but we're the good guys, and they're
the goodest of the guys exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Oh, Ben, I watched and researching for this. There's a
really cool documentary on YouTube called Atomic Cowboys. It's like
a little thirty minute doc about this whole situation, but
intersperses all of this amazing footage that you've probably seen.
Some of it is really idyllic, kind of like Ozzie
and Harriet type. You know, neighborhoods, and you know, all
(10:09):
that stuff interspersed with like stop drop and roll or
not stop dropping roll, duck and cover that kind that's
the one. Sorry, stop dropping roll is completely different. But
they had these things, these communities that were built situated
near these facilities. They were called atomic cities, and it
was like almost a point of pride to live in
these It was like you were part of the future,
(10:29):
you know. And all of these little, you know, pretty
much propaganda videos, let's be honest, are are really just
showing Oh and just like anyone else, Little Johnny's on
his way to school and here's you know, his mother, Margaret,
and oh and father's coming home from work at the plant.
You know, everything's honky darry here in Atomic City. And
it's absolutely covering up just the image there and that
(10:54):
associating it with that nationalism and that kind of sears
catalog kind of idealism. There's a real nasty underbelly going
on that we're going to get into that this was
all kind of trying to cover up, if not a
completely purposefully, definitely subconsciously.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'll never forget a DVD short film
series that I subscribed to a long time ago from
the makers of McSweeney's. It's called Walfin. I think a
Mission Control has seen some of those two. There was
one episode that had a damning look into the private
(11:32):
public partnerships. It's a paint commercial and you might be
able to find this on YouTube. And the paint commercial
actually shows is by a private paint company, and it
actually shows how great the paint that they produce is
because it can withstand certain aspects of a nuclear detonation.
(11:53):
And I think they got that footage because of a
partnership with the US government. Thinks were very sticky. Like
if you think if you think business and government are
way too friendly and corrupt in the modern day, first off,
you're right. Secondly, this is actually a little bit better
than it used to be in this regard.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Absolutely no separation of church and state in that regard.
Back in those days, I mean, Uncle Sam was very,
very very cozy with private industry and unfortunately feels like
we're rolling back to a situation that's starting to resemble
the forties a little bit in that respect nowadays, in
my opinion. But yeah, let's get more into what were
(12:35):
they building in there. It was used. They had two
thousand acres that were used for the testing and development
of rocket engines for the US space program and for
other weapons research advanced weapons research, and during its history,
more than thirty thousand rocket engine tests were conducted at
I'm going to crib a name. I saw a press
(12:57):
conference with some of the former employees. They call it
santas which that kind of day. So we're conducted there
at Santa Su.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, yep, thirty thousand. Now that counts all kinds of tests.
That counts, you know, actual launches to just like hey,
let's rev up the engine, see if it explodes. They
were also, as you mentioned, they were conducting a lot
of nuclear research. Over the course of forty years or so.
(13:25):
That one specific area at the complex, Area four would
eventually be home to ten different nuclear reactors, a fabrication
facility to make plutonium, a fuel facility for uranium, and
something called a hot labs that's a way to that's
where they remotely maybe machine parts or separate radioactive material.
(13:49):
And the reason they're doing it remotely, of course, is
because it is a death sentence to be exposed to
a lot of that stuff for a significant amount of time,
so we can understand why, why the US government, why
Uncle Sam was not in a hurry to tell the
public hey were building a nuclear site. We're trying to
(14:09):
be safe, but just just so you know, duck and
cover I guess, which doesn't work. Like you know, some
of our older audience members today, you may have gone
to school at the time when people were conducting those
nuclear attack drills, especially during like the Cuban missile crisis.
(14:31):
From what I understand, they told kids to just get
under their desk.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Maybe the desk that they were using were a much
higher quality than the desk we grew up with.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Yeah, it basically would generate some kind of Pompeii level
duck and covering skeletons. You know, that's kind of what
would happen there, I think. But they had little cartoon
turtles that we're telling you how to do it. So
who doesn't believe a cartoon turtle?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You know, I love I love a cartoon mascot. Yes,
stick those on anything, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
I'll do whatever they say literally, right as an adults,
we need a cartoon mascot for the show.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
So send your suggestions to Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
We'd love to check them out. But you know, this
place did not have a cartoon mascot. It was very
much not off the books, but it was very much
like a need to know basis as far as what
was going on. And it's no surprise that they were
(15:28):
doing that. That's not inherently evil because they you know,
you want to prevent rival governments from learning about your
nuclear process. You want to stop those leaks. But here's
the problem. Despite the fact, despite their intense efforts to
hide this from the public and from their rivals, the
(15:52):
truth came out and drips and drabs because people started
getting sick. What are we talking about? Well tell you,
after a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Yeah, authorities, as you said at the at the end
of the first half been or third whatever, I don't
know math. The research was hidden, it was obscured by
the government Santa suit. It required that level of discretion.
But hand in hand with that went some much less
(16:34):
savory shall we call it obfuscations. I'm using some five
dollars words today, And they in fact covered up and
hid several multiple disasters that had long standing effects on
employees and their families' lives.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
This is this is amazing. Okay, this is amazing and
the worst way. So if you ask before we get
into this, if we were all everybody listening and all
of us here, if we were just hanging out and
we asked everybody in the room, what are what are
the big nuclear disasters, we'd say stuff like Chernobyl. We'd
stay stuff like the nuclear accidents, not the bombings. We'd
(17:15):
see three mile islands, three mile Island of course, Fukushima
or something. This should be on that list. The first,
like the first huge nuclear reaction or accident, dates all
the way back to nineteen fifty nine. One of the
nuclear reactors, again just thirty miles away from Los Angeles,
(17:38):
partially suffered a meltdown. Workers tried to repair it, and
when they couldn't, the management of the of the facility said,
you know what, open the door of the reactor. Let
that radiation out into the air. This this means it
is virtually certain that that irradiated material spread to those
(17:59):
nearby commune we mentioned early, such as Canooga Park or
Semi Valley, Chatsworth, and they they did eventually, like more
than a month later, have some kind of press statement,
but it was very much.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Not the truth. Six weeks after the meltdown, the Atomic
Energy Commission, again the predecessor to the Department of Energy,
issued a statement saying that there had been a minor,
a little oopsie. They called it a fuel element failure,
but that there had been quote no release of radioactive
(18:37):
materials into the environment, and that just wasn't true. NASA, Yeah, no,
NASA and aerospace company Rocketdyne, which I love the name
of that. It sounds like something out of one of
the Fallout games, which, by the way, I'm downloading Fallout
seventy six right now. I'm really excited. Doing this research
made me crave that kind of nuclear wasteland, like nineteen
(18:58):
forties apocalyptic vine, So looking forward to playing that. But yeah,
Rocket Dime continued to use the site for thousands of
rocket tests like this was a non issue through the
nineties or the early nineties, nineteen ninety Those activities also
released all sorts of toxic chemicals into the air and
deposited them in the groundwater, the surface water as well,
(19:22):
and also the soil. All of this was also covered up.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, you could say it was buried. I don't know
why your kids are getting sick. Maybe you should be
a better parrot, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
These are the types of.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Terrible lies and misdirections that people in power can employ.
We mentioned that during its history, during the history of SSFL,
there was not just that one accident in nineteen fifty nine,
there were several nuclear accidents at the lab. But when
we mentioned Three Mile Islands, what we didn't mention is
(19:57):
that multiple experts believe that partial melt out Area four
could be the worst nuclear disaster in US history. If
you measure the amount of radiation released, it may have
released more radiation than what was released during Three Mile
NBC did some fantastic deep dive journalism on this with
(20:20):
some other sources, and I like the way they put it.
They said, the nineteen fifty nine Santus is on a
field laboratory sodium reactor experiments. Level is unknown, but it's
thought to have released two hundred and sixty times more
radiation than the Three Mile Island disaster. It is insane
(20:41):
that that was not all over the news. A three
mile by the way, occurred March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine.
So twenty years later and still probably didn't beat the
hidden record of SSFL. Can we just really quickly talk
about how radiation works.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I didn't really fully grasp it until I saw the
television special Chernobyl. They do such a good job of
explaining how it really damages your body. Basically, radiation particles
are like you can think of them as physical things.
They penetrate your body and damage your tissues. And if
(21:20):
you're bombarded with like high levels of radiation, as many
of the folks who were unfortunate enough to have been
in Chernobyl were, it will start to make you melt
from the inside out. For lack of a better expression,
I mean, you will get lesions on your skin. It
really is like some sights sci fi nightmare kind of
(21:40):
body horror, like David Cronenberg type stuff. But with just
a little bit of radiation. It might not be enough
for you to register it like physically like that, but
it can damage cells in your body and cause mutations
and cause you to get things like cancer. That's a
big one. And it's just because these things shoot at you.
(22:00):
And the way they describe it in the show is
like bullets, you know, they're like each one is like
a little radiation bullet, you know, and it depends on
where it hits. That kind of determines what the effects
will be and how dense the hail of bullets that
you're receiving is.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, And to explain what it means by a level
five event, I said three Mile Islands. The level five events,
this nineteen to fifty nine incident is probably higher. There
is something called the International Nuclear Event scale. It goes
from zero to seven, with zero being an anomaly with
(22:38):
no real safety consequence to level seven a major accident.
These are world changing events. Right now, there are only
officially two level seven disasters Chernobyl and Fukushima, so nineteen
eighty six and twenty eleven. But for something to be
a level five incident like three Mile Island, that means
(23:02):
it is an accident that has wider consequences, things that
go beyond the immediate environment. Means it can impact people around.
That means there will be at least several deaths. That
means that there will also be opportunity for more critical
failures in the future unless something's done immediately so that
(23:24):
it's a big deal. On a one out of seven,
this was at least a five, And we mentioned that
the management at the time just said, you know, open
the door, you let the radiation out, not because we're jerks,
but because this is the only way to prevent the
reactor from exploding. The employees were also given back tee
(23:46):
to clean off the walls, right.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Which is just basically just an antiseptic. I mean, it's
the same bactine you would spray on a booboo. You know. Look,
if your kid like skin, their need spray back team,
And this is what they would use to clean off
the stuff from the walls.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And then they used cotex pads for the floors. They
were sworn to silence Omerta. Don't tell anyone, not even
your spouse. That's just one disaster. There was another one
that occurred two years before, in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
And really quickly too. I mean there was when you
say Omerica, it was almost like it was this strong
arm kind of attitude where someone asked, there's in that
documentary I was talking about. One of the employees or
the lab workers asked like, can I tell my wife
about this? Like this is this seems like it would
affect her and my family, And they were like, you
(24:35):
will not breathe a word of this, like under you know,
implied threat. You know what I mean the tone he
said he was very scared for his safety because there
was like, you know, a military official that was kind
of like this strong man kind of in the background,
sort of looming large, and yeah, there was this implied threat.
(24:57):
For sure, you will not tell anyone about this.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I mean consider you know, once again it's the argument
of the greater good. What is one person or two people,
or one hundred people's lives worth when compared to nuclear supremacy.
They really thought that they could and should do anything
legal or illegal necessary to win first place in the
(25:22):
arms race. So that's why these things keep getting covered up.
The nineteen fifty seven case is hot lap, not a reactor. Again,
that's the stuff to remotely handle or machine radioactive metal.
This was a side of a fire that got out
of control, and the fire can transport these irradiated substances
(25:45):
much further than they normally would be. We also have
we also know for sure now in twenty twenty, we
know for sure that at least four of the site's
ten total nuclear reactors became accident sites at some point.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
In their career. Yeah, I mean, there were some interviews
in the documentary I keep referring to nuclear cowboys, I
think is what it's called. Highly recommend to check it out.
Some old stock interviews that were like testimonies. I think
I can't quite place the sources, but it was referred
to as a very slipshod operation, and you know, we
(26:23):
just know back in those days, standards weren't what they
are today. I'm sure they were doing the best they
could with what they had, I guess, but no, now,
this one's just really out of control. Bad Ben. I
think I may have told you. I used to work
for Georgia Public Radio and my beat was a facility
near where I lived in Augusta called the Savannah River Site,
which was actually built right around the same time as
(26:45):
as Santa Sue, and they refine nuclear material, you know,
for weapons, you know, for nuclear nuclear weapons payloads, and
then over time it was converted into play to reclaim
nuclear materials from you know, these kind of spent nuclear
(27:06):
cores or whatever from these from these weapons, and it
was part of the Atoms for Peace program where they
would actually kind of convert these weapons into material they
could then reuse, but it became a big source of
you know, activists kind of ire because they were dumping
radioactive materials into open pits in the ground. Then become
(27:28):
what's called superfund sites, which I always thought, you know,
that doesn't sound like super fun at all, But it's
fund with a D because it designates the kind of
government assistance that it is given to help clean up
these sites. And that is a big thing with this
that we'll get into a little later, but right away,
this idea of these very dangerous methods of disposing of
(27:50):
nuclear material at the sites becomes a big issue as well.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, So as I was saying, you know, I think
it's worth the time to walk through through the other
nuclear accidents. You can maybe call the nineteen fifty nine
sodium reactor, you can call that a disaster. But also
in March of nineteen fifty nine, just a few months
(28:14):
before the sodium reactor, the A six reactor experienced a
release of fission gases, so again contaminating the environment. In
sixty four, another reactor had damage to eighty percent of
its fuel. In sixty nine, another reactor had damage, luckily
(28:35):
only a third of its fuel, but again remember the
fuel is nuclear material. And then there was a fire
in nineteen seventy one, another.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Fire, another fire. Yeah, radioactive fire reminds you. And again
this the smoke and the heat really does a number
on carrying these particles, you know, far and wide right,
And this one involved combustible primary reactor coolant or contaminated
with mixed fission products. And these reactors also didn't have
(29:06):
containment structures. This is a big deal because that directly
puts the workers at risk. Because we'll get into a
little later, they weren't required to wear like hazmat suits.
They were wearing some form of protection, but it certainly
wasn't all encompassing. And the reactors didn't have containment structures.
(29:28):
They were essentially giant concrete domes. Those cooling towers that
surround most nuclear reactors, right, They didn't have that, so
it was just kind of emitting these particles into the air.
Now we get into the disposal part, which is just
you know, ridiculous. They were called burn pits, sodium burn pits.
(29:49):
There were multiple spills and contamination events involved with these,
and these burn pits were essentially open air pits that
were used for cleaning parts or components of the for
machinery that had been contaminated by radioactive sodium and was
also contaminated by the burning of radioactively and chemically contaminated items,
(30:10):
and very few, if any safety precautions were taken the
ones I was talking about at Savannah Riversite. They at
least kind of ligned them with some material like sort
of like a barrier against the groundwater or against the
you know, leaking leaching into the soil. But if I'm
not mistaken, Ben, these were just pits that were dug
right into the ground.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah. One thing I would say, to be absolutely fair
for these folks is that there were a lot of
things they didn't understand that we do know now in
the in the you know, in the realm of safety
around radioactive nuclear materials. But they they knew more than
enough to know that this was a horrible idea. I'd
(30:50):
like to put a human face on this by introducing
a guy named James Palmer. He may have showed up
in the in some other documentaries too, but he did
some interviews with journalists later. He was a former worker
at SSFL and he had a crew of twenty seven people.
Of those twenty seven people twenty two died of cancer.
(31:15):
Cancer is a horrible thing. It happens for a number
of reasons, but there was a clear correlation here. To
say otherwise is to willfully be ignorant. He described stuff
in this interview where he would come home from work
and he would be feeling, you know, kind of normal,
maybe a little pooped because he'd been working all day.
He would try to kiss his wife hello, and her
(31:35):
lips would be burned because of the chemicals he had
been breathing at work. They actually fished in one of
three ponds that were radiated, and sometimes the water was
so polluted that this being real life, the fish didn't
develop three eyes. They just died off and started floating
on the surface. And they would try to, like when
(31:56):
they were fishing, they would try to like wash the
fish with hydrogen proper side to neutralize any kind of contamination,
but obviously that doesn't work. He said that every single
water source there was contaminated. He sums it up in
an interview with Ivan Sure County Star by saying this
(32:18):
was a horror show. And you know, when we talked
about how they disposed of stuff, it just gets worse.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Yeah, And by the way, it's really fascinating that every
every source that I found about this story is from
the La Times or from somewhere out there in that
part of the country. It really was just not a
national news story. It's it's mind boggling, I mean, you know,
because now we're seeing multiple just absolutely egregious, you know,
(32:49):
events taking place at this facility, and they were covered
up and so back to the disposal sometimes And this
came from an interview. I believe it was with Paul
because he definitely did some interviews and made the rounds,
but there were a few others as well, so forgive
me if I'm mistaken there, but a gentleman who worked
(33:09):
in the site at the time many years later, fifty
years later, was doing this interview and talked about how
sometimes they would dispose of radioactive sodium by rowing bundles
of the stuff. Like I say bundles loosely, it's just
the term I'm using out into the middle of one
(33:30):
of those ponds in a small rowboat and then dropping
it into the water, and then the workers would turn
back and row ashore duck for cover and then peek
up like you would taking cover in like a shooter
game and fire a shot with a thirty hot six
rifle at that bundle out in the water. It reminds
me of some sort of twisted Viking funeral kind of
you know. And then it wouldn't like cause it to
(33:53):
explode by igniting a spark, No, it was the water
that would cause it to explode, because the water would
then penetrate the sodium and react violently. A massive explosion
would ensue. And they did this pretty frequently, and they
were supposed to be just quote unquote disposing of clean sodium,
(34:13):
but like you said, bem, oftentimes in those burn pits,
radioactive sodium would end up in there as well with
radiactive contamination. So this would leak into the groundwater, it
would create that smoke, the explosion that would carry it
into those bedroom communities, those atomic cities. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
And look, I know what a lot of us are
thinking right now when you hear that, you're thinking, but, hey,
aren't explosions cool. Yeah, that's subjectively true. Explosions are really cool,
but radiation is not. So you know, you can kind
of get a picture and implication here that this is
a bit of a diversion for some of these guys too,
(34:53):
because you get to see this massive explosion. But it's
not worth the price we paid. So if this was
all secret, if this was happening under the dark of night,
if people were being threatened to be quiet about it,
then how do we know about it today? How to
wane Cee send us an email? How are we getting
these facts? We'll tell you after we're from our sponsor.
(35:24):
We're back. So I mentioned earlier at the top of
the show that this cover up continued for quite a while,
you know, from the late forties on. But one thing
that I think stymied efforts to cover up these close
(35:44):
calls and this nuclear disaster is just simply the medical data.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
People who lived.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
In the area were getting cancer at a much higher
rate than you would expect out of a population. It
was at a level such that other people in the
area started to notice, you know what I mean, Like
six year olds don't usually have these kind of diseases,
and multiple ones don't. And I believe it wasn't until
(36:10):
the nineteen seventies that things started to come out, not
the full extent, but started to leak to the public.
And by that point, I would guess it was kind
of already an open secret in the region.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
What do you think. Yeah, it wasn't until November of
nineteen seventy nine that a k NBCTV report revealed that
evidence of that partial meltdown. I can't it's just shocking
to me. That's almost the nineteen eighties, and this has
been going on since the forties.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, yeah, And it may have been a situation where
I hate to say it, but it may have been
a situation where the journalist was allowed to cover it,
because I'm sure other people have been making inquiries for
some time, but maybe they were trying to get ahead
of the facts, you know, or ahead of the fallout.
(37:01):
Poor choice of words there, but you know, the social fallout.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Of this perfect choice of words there, Ben, And ironically,
I always misused that nineteen seventy nine was when the
three Mile Island disaster took place.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
So that's a perfect time to slide that in under
the radar, you know, And investigation since then have happened.
In nineteen eighty nine, the Department of Energy launched investigation
or concluded an investigation, and they said there was widespread
contamination radioactive and chemical contamination. Because remember we're talking thirty
(37:35):
thousand rocket tests that were spread across the Santa Susanna site.
It was riddled with it, and the report clearly pointed
to several cover ups over at least the past few decades.
This was reported, but as you said, primarily in local media,
and again this is almost nineteen ninety now, the local population,
(37:58):
the municipal governments, they reacted. The lawsuits started to roll in,
and people lobbied to shut down any continued nuclear activity
at the site, because remember that went on until two
thousand and six.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Yes, that's true. And on July twenty sixth of nineteen
ninety four, two scientists Otto k. Heimi and Larry A.
Pew were killed when the chemicals they were illegally burning
in those open pits, surprise, surprise, exploded. There was a
grand jury investigation and an FBI raid on the facility,
(38:33):
and three Rocket Dyne officials pled guilty to illegally storing
explosive materials. In June of two thousand and four, the
jury was, though deadlocked on the more serious charge, which
related to illegal burning of hazardous waste. And this isn't
burning trash in your backyard, my friends, this is not
(38:56):
leaf piles. You know, without a permit. This this is
a wanton disregard for not only the safety of your employees,
but of the public. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
And you know you have to wonder too whether there
is any corruption of the jury, right, any witness, intimidation
or tampering. Don't have solid proof of that, but I
I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical to think that that
could be in the.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
Cards A million percent.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, we have. We have also information on ongoing medical claims.
There's an epidemiologist named hal Morgenstern, and he conducted a
long term study between nineteen eighty eight and two thousand
and two. He found that people living within two miles
(39:48):
of the lab site are sixty percent more likely to
be diagnosed with certain specific cancers compared to residents living
just five miles from the site. So there there is
a clear correlation here.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Well, and what it's just a more extreme example, but
it's what they refer to as like the fallout zone.
You know, there is a range around this the the
area where this radiation radiates from that you know is
going to be more susceptible to this stuff. And then
you know, further away it's it's much difficult, much more difficult,
unless you know, something like wind patterns carry it farther
(40:25):
or you know, even with Fukushima, there was a concern
that birds were carrying radioactive materials outside of beyond that
that fallout zone. So yeah, this absolutely makes sense. And
in October of two thousand and six, the Santa Susanna
Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, which was you know, supposedly an
independent review board composed of scientists and researchers from around
(40:48):
the US, concluded that based on the available data and
computer models, contamination of the facility resulted in an estimated
two hundred and sixty cancer related deaths.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Yeah, there were multiple lawsuits that have been in the works.
Companies like Boeing have also reached settlements with some plaintiffs,
though the settlements remained controversial. There's an article in the
La Times called how one Woman's fight is helping workers
decades after Santa Susanna radiation exposure, and it talks about
(41:20):
this woman named Bonnie Clee, who worked for Rockadyne in
the sixties and seventies, has kind of really come forward
to champion the case of her fellow employees and co workers.
Who were affected by this. She started having pain in
her bladder and she went and saw a doctor who
(41:41):
told her that she had cancer and it was likely
due to occupational hazards. And there have been payouts thus far,
but there was even an issue where the Department of
Labor had in fact denied many of the claims filed
by these workers who were stricken with cancer. And this
(42:04):
was under a program called the two thousand Energy Employees
Occupational Illness Program Act. So the burden of proof was
just obviously very very difficult to achieve, and she helped
compile letters and press releases and news articles and all
of this stuff and helped kind of get that decision
overturned so folks were able to receive restitution for this condition.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Let me go back in so in the notes of
my research, I just mentioned companies like Boeing reaching settlements,
but I also want to mention I want to hit
that line about multiple lawsuits being actively in the works.
The story doesn't have an ending yet. One plaint of
(42:51):
Margaret and Galosso she sued Boeing, but she said her
attorneys went behind her back and accepted a thirty million
dollars settlement with Boeing, but they never got her approval,
and she thinks they were doing it because they get
a sixty percent cut after you know their costs and fees,
which can happen, and then they are also there are
(43:14):
also problems with how settlements are being distributed to people,
like some plaintiffs are only receiving, you know, at the
end of the day, something like thirty thousand dollars. And
in the United States, if you have a serious medical condition,
thirty thousand dollars is not going to solve your problem.
You sadly right, exactly, so you can see how these
(43:39):
settlements are rightly controversial. I just want to make sure
that I emphasize that these are ongoing legal battles.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
That's right. And just to quickly backtrack to Bonnie Klee
when she assembled all those materials and those petitions and
delivered them to the federal government in two thousand and seven,
As I said, it did lead to to a change
and the ability for folks to get those claims accepted.
But it's fascinating. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and
(44:08):
Health or NIOSH created a special designation just for that
field lab and this two hundred and eighty acre area
four that we've talked about extensively, and this was for
workers who were exposed for at least two hundred and
fifty days between January first of nineteen fifty five and
(44:29):
January thirty first of nineteen fifty eight, and then it
was eventually expanded to nineteen sixty five. So it's cool
to see at least, you know, an individual being able
to make some change, But then you're right, been the
quality of those payouts kind of trumps the quantity at times, right.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, So the employees were, you know, probably the most
directly exposed, but you know, innocent residents were exposed. People
in real life were getting sick and they had no
idea why there's a no angle here that should be
considered more closely, especially as it affects the future in
(45:07):
a way that a lot of people don't think about.
As you might recall conspiracy realist California, like other parts
of the world, has recently been plagued by wildfires, and
many indications to tell us or lead us to believe that,
depending on weather conditions, these wildfires may become a semi
regular or annual thing. At two a little bit before
(45:31):
two thirty. On November eighth, twenty eighteen, just a few
years ago, South California, Edison reported a circuit outage at
the Susanna site, and two minutes later there were flames
seen in a canyon near that location. There was a
guy there, a reporter named Stu Mundel working for k
(45:53):
CAL nine. He was overhead in a helicopter took a
picture before the fire broke out. It turned out that
had before this fire began, they had disabled and taken
apart a lot of the fire suppression systems at the site,
so people couldn't even people couldn't even fight small fires
at this location. And this led La County Deputy fire
(46:18):
chief at the time, Vince Payinna, to say they could
have stopped what would later become known as the Woolsey
Forest fire. By one estimate, this fire by itself released
forty thousand tons of ash contaminated with radiation and chemicals
and with you know, if there's not an extensive cleanup,
(46:39):
which still has not happened, then we have to reasonably
assume something worse could happen the next time a wildfire
rolls through town. This is dangerous.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
This is.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
You know, like the old Harrison Ford film. This is
clear and present danger.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
Get off my plane. Mean, that's a different way that
was what was that Air Force one? Sorry I forgot
about that way memory. He was the he was the
ask of the president. He was the president, but he,
like you know, took on the terrors single handedly. But
it's true, Ben, and all of this still is ongoing.
Like you said, the story's not over in terms of
(47:19):
the folks whose lives were upended by this, you know,
who lost loved ones. And also the site itself is
still not cleaned up. That there was an agreement that
was made with the federal government to clean up the site,
but then it was determined that it wasn't realistic, and
it was it was kind of thrown out. It's still
(47:41):
kind of in limbo right now, and it's really not
clear as to when this will take place. You know,
I go back to Savannah riversite really quick, just just
for some like firsthand knowledge of the efforts there. It
is an ongoing process cleaning up the Savannah River site.
They have to test wildlife, Ben constantly. They tag turtles
by drilling little holes in their shells and putting these
(48:03):
trackers in there and they find the same turtle and
then test them for radiation to see to track how
effective their cleanup efforts have been over time. And because
the turtles go out and wander, you know, and they
could potentially pick it up. And there are these open
pits that I was talking about that they've had to
fill in and clean up and all of that, and
(48:24):
so that is ongoing and as is this, but it
doesn't appear here been that there are even really any
measures put in place at all. At least Savannah River
site's been sort of you know, on track and making
ongoing efforts to clean up that stuff. But it really
is a slippery slope there.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Savannah also has a nuclear weapon missing somewhere off the
coast in the water, so they have got they've got
a lot to struggle with. So going back to SSFL,
going back to the Santo Susanna Field Laboratory, I want
to note there was a EPA study in twenty twelve,
pretty extensive, cost taxpayers around forty one million dollars, and
(49:05):
they showed that there are astronomical levels of radiation in
the area. This is we're going to get into the
weeds maybe a little bit, but this is important because
we all need to be aware of just how much
radiation we're talking about here. The presence of things like
strontium ninety tests two hundred and eighty four times higher
(49:25):
than normal, Caesium one thirty seven is over nine thousand
times higher than normal, plutonium two thirty nine ninety two
times higher. The hits keep coming, and these are these
measures are pulled like twenty four feet below the soil surface,
so that's super deep. That's a lot of penetration. And
(49:48):
you know, both private entities like Boeing and the US
government have continued to say they're going to do something.
Boeing currently owns most of the site, they bought it
in nineteen ninety six. They want to turn it into
something they call an open space habitat. But really, you know,
when you look at how much, how much energy, and
(50:13):
how much money is going to have to go into
the effort to fix this, you can see how I
get the feeling a lot of people are passing the
bill around, you know what I mean. There's a guy
who probably knows the most in the world, at least
officially about SSFL is a guy named Dan Hirsch. Professor
(50:33):
Dan Hirsch. He used to direct Santa Cruz's program on
environmental nuclear policy. He says everything in the area is
heavily contaminated. It has approximately one hundred different unique toxic
chemicals in the soil, including you know, we mentioned the
radiation or the radioactive stuff, but we didn't mention the
(50:55):
heavy metals like mercury, the volatile organic compounds VOS. Fun
fact about VOCs probably my favorite fact about VOCs. That's
what forms new car smell.
Speaker 4 (51:08):
Oh wow, yeah, I did not know that at all.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Man, you're hearing the heat or you're you're smelling, sorry,
my cinisation is coming out. You're smelling the the chemicals
that you know that release when stuff inside your car
is heated on a hot day. That's why a newer
car will smell like voc or sometimes your car just
if it's hot, will smell like that.
Speaker 4 (51:32):
Is it meant to kind of what's the word looking for?
Kind of mimic like the smell of like hot leather seats.
You know, it's kind of what I've always assumed.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
The new car smell is.
Speaker 4 (51:44):
Yeah, or maybe it's just like hot seats in general,
and like all the chemicals that go into like coating
those seats and the fabric and all that stuff to
treat it to make it like stain resistant. It really does.
Just it's weird that we people like it because they
associate it with this concept of own a thing or
of like, you know, something that's new, But it really
is just a chemical smell.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Yeah, and it's bad for you over time. But you know,
I'm a little bit of a gearhead. I love that stuff.
I used to have it just sprayed around the house
until we did an episode on car stuff and I
learned exactly what I was snorting, So lesson learned there.
Luckily that didn't make my house super contaminated. But Professor
(52:27):
Hirsch points out that in his opinion, and again he's
very well acquainted with this, the santas Is on a
Field Experiment site is Again this is just his opinion
saying this. He says it's the most contaminated site in
the United States by any measure. And he thinks that
(52:47):
even the studies that have been released on the correlation
between cancer and chronic health conditions, the one in two
thousand and six, he thinks that still isn't the whole truth.
He thinks there's much more to the story. We're just
scratching the scandalous surface of this this cover up. I
(53:09):
don't I guess it's not ongoing because people can talk
about it now, but it's not resolved.
Speaker 4 (53:15):
Yeah, because the study that was released in two thousand
and six estimated the between three hundred and eighteen hundred
that's a pretty wide swath people developed cancer as a
result of the nineteen fifty nine meltdown. That's the meltdown,
not the other incidents, the or the thirty thousand rocket
engine tests that we talked about at the top of
the show. So absolutely just scratching the super scandalous surface
(53:41):
of these cover ups, which are not conspiracy theories, my friends,
these are that is what this is. This is a
conspiracy to cover up a very real thing that happened
that the public should have known about, but that they
did not want you to know.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yes, and this story unfortunately doesn't end. This is ongoing.
So we want to thank Wayne for hipping us to this.
At the risk, at the risk of sounding like I
live in too much of a weird cover up bubble,
I'm usually aware of these things. So I learned a
(54:18):
lot in the research for this episode, and I want
to know many people living there in southern California. I
want a resolution too. We want to hear your thoughts.
Were you aware of this, do you have personal experience
with it? Let us know why you're at it. Why
not let us know about any other nuclear or industrial
cover ups in your neck of the Global Woods. You
(54:40):
can find us pretty much anywhere on the internet where
on Twitter, We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook. Shout out
to our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. You
can follow us there. You can also follow us as individuals.
Speaker 4 (54:52):
You sure can. I just want to say I was
completely unaware of the story as well, and just blown
away by the fact that it was just these regional
I mean La Times obviously a big publication, but it
was all sources from right around that part of the world.
So if you have stories like this, please let us
know in all those ways, Ben said, And if you
do want to find us as individuals, you can find
me on Instagram where I am at how Now, Noel Brown, I.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Am at Ben Bowlin hsw on Twitter. I am at
Ben Bolan on Instagram. Matt is on Instagram, but he's
kinda he's got a weird conspiracy of his own about it.
You'll have to follow the breadcrumbs. Let us know what
you find. If you don't like social media, we get it.
(55:37):
We got a phone number you can call us anytime.
We are one eight three three std WYTK. But hold on,
you might say, what do I do if I hate
social media? What if I I hate phones? We've got
good news for you, folks. We have one last way
to contact us any old time you want, twenty four
(55:59):
to seven every day of the year, and that is
our email address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realists. We're back with a classic episode. You've
all probably heard about Three Mile Island, but as we
discovered in twenty twenty, that's unfortunately only one of several
similar and equally disturbing stories.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Oh dude, this is rocket Dyne. Oh wow, not until
I read the description, I remember what this is. This
is crazy scary because you know, we hear, as you said,
we hear about some of these big stories, right, but
then there's other stuff happening that has potential implications for
a massive loss of life that just kind of occurs,
(00:36):
and nobody even really knows about it exactly.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
In this episode, we are exploring the events of July
nineteen fifty nine where a little place called the Santa
Susana Field Laboratory partially melted down, and Uncle Sam said.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Sh nobody gots to know about this.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
He shushed it hard. We're gonna have a word from
our sponsors and then we'll jump right into the.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Story from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn this stuff. They don't want you to know.
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Hello and welcome back to the show. My name is Noel.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Our writer Dive Matt Frederick is actually on vacation today.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Control Deck, and most importantly you are here and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
No I was thinking of a way to open this episode,
and I've got to say I thought back on this.
I'd like to get your opinion. For a lot of
people here in the US, the first childhood understanding we
have of nuclear technology doesn't come from a textbook. It
actually comes from The Simpsons. Was that your experience?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Oh? Absolutely. I mean, just like that iconic shape of
those cooling towers, which you used to think, oh, that's
where the nuclear stuff happens, but that's not, in fact
the case. Those are just the cooling towers. But that
iconic Simpson's opening where you trace Homer's activities like from
you know, his seat at the nuclear power plant in
Springfield where he like pushes the button or whatever. I
(02:32):
guess I'm confusing him with George Jetson a little bit,
but it was similar because it was meant to be
like a job any idiot could do kind of sort
of the joke because Homer is sort of this classic
buffoon and then you see that nuclear rod that accidentally
slips into his pocket and then finds its way into
like the baby's crib or something. It's a whole thing
(02:53):
where you kind of trace, you know, the movement of
this nuclear rod through that opening sequence. Yeah, I like what.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I like what you pointed out about how Homer is
a bit of a use the word buffoon. He is
kind of an income poop. He's lovable, but he's definitely oafish.
And despite being one of the dumbest guys in Springfield,
he somehow has a job at a nuclear plant that
routinely experiences low level or even high level disasters. And
(03:23):
interestingly enough, in the show, even though I haven't seen
The Simpsons in a while, a lot of these disasters
never get revealed to the people living in Springfield.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And like the Rods just escape. It's sort of the joke, right,
I mean, it really is kind of lampooning this whole
culture of cover up in American nuclear power, from things
like Three Mile Island to even like you know, Ruther
Russian attempts to contain the disaster at Chernobyl and this
idea that you know, those in power can never be wrong,
(03:52):
and if we say it didn't happen, then it didn't
happen as long as no one finds out right, right.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I bet Monty Burns would probably love the novel nineteen
eighty four just as much as us, but for very
different reasons. So you know, as it turns out, you know,
the things like this can happen in the real world,
but spoiler alert, when they do, they're not near as
(04:17):
funny as a plotline in the Simpsons.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Wait, you mean three eyed fish aren't cuddly, cute little
creatures that just flop around with a smile.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
You know, I have to point out maybe this is
an episode for another day, but I was immensely heartbroken
to learn that when those kind of mutations occur, they
usually don't result in a living animal. Certainly not one
that makes it to adulthood. That's a shame, and.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Certainly not one that's cuddly that you could model like
a plushy toy.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
After right, right, agreed, So we are going somewhere with
this today, Conspiracy Realist. We were inspired to make today's
episode via an email from Wayne C. Wayne C wrote
to us a while back and you said, have you
covered the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory. Is this something you
(05:08):
could cover? And Wayne you go on to mention that
you were surprised, so very few people have heard about this,
and in fact, peep behind the curtain, we had not
heard of this either. So here are the facts.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
The Santa Susanna Field Laboratory is was, let's say, yeah,
I can use past tense in terms of when it
was operational, a massive complex of research and development labs
located in Semi Valley, which is in southern California, and
it has a long history. It really is one of
those classic kind of the Atomic Age kind of you know,
(05:45):
nineteen forties kind of facilities where it was really you know,
the dawning of a new era and all that, and
nuclear power was the wave of the future. So yeah,
it's been operational doing one thing or another since around
nineteen forty seven, two years after the detonation of the
world's first nuclear weapon, an aerospace company called North American
Aviation decided to build a facility located in a rural
(06:09):
part of the hills above Simi Valley and at First,
the purpose of the site was to test rocket engines.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
And they did this for a long time. From nineteen
forty nine to two thousand and six, the US Space
Program routinely used this site to develop and test a
very tricky part of rocketry, which was liquid propellant. Liquid
propellant is some high grade stuff. You know, it's surprised,
(06:39):
it's complicated. It's also very dangerous in terms of the
contaminants that you know, in terms of just the chemicals themselves.
But that's not all they did. As you mentioned Nolan,
nineteen fifty three, under the supervision of the US Atomic
Energy Commission, that's the predecessor of the Department of Energy,
the FEEL Lab. We'll call Santa Susanna s SSFL. For this,
(07:06):
they added something they called Area four, and from nineteen
fifty three to at least nineteen eighty, Area four was
home to nuclear reactors.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
From nineteen sixty six to nineteen ninety eight, the US
government actually sponsored a liquid metal research center at the site.
Does that mean they were making T one thousands ben?
Is that what that means?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
One would hope? I think some of that work is
still probably classified. We don't know, But liquid metals, just
like nuclear materials, just like liquid rocket propellant. Also is
not the kind of stuff you know, you want to
play with. It's not the kind of stuff you want
to see at the bottom of the slide in your
(07:48):
local playground. And you know, speaking of civilian stuff, that's
one interesting part of ss FL. Santa Susanna is only
about seven miles northwest of Canoga Park. It's only thirty
miles northwest of downtown LA, this huge population center.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Yeah, it's true. There's a community called Bell Canyon that
runs across the entire southern border. And here's the thing.
Despite that close proximity to you know, people's homes, into
residential areas, and to schools and churches and libraries for
many people to this day, the site and the activities
that took place inside of it have remained shrouded in mystery. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, Like I said an earlier episode, I think Q Tom,
wait's what's the building in there? You're right, this site
was the home of numerous secret projects that were private
public partnerships. That's pretty common, you know, especially in the
aerospace industry or the nuclear industry. And it sounds crazy
to say, Well, the locals eventually just came to accept
(08:56):
that there was this weird facility on the you know,
on the other side of the park or in town,
and they just went about their daily lives. But we
have to remember, first off, it's crazy how quickly things
become normal. And we also have to remember that this
a lot of this work was occurring throughout the Cold War,
(09:19):
right from the very end of World War Two, so
there's a little bit of patriotism tied up in there.
There's a little bit of you know, people tended to
trust the government more in general, so.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
They were like ruols.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I mean, yeah, no one saw it coming. But because
of that, you know, there's a I think there's a
sense of inherent nationalism there, like we may not know
what they're doing, but we're the good guys, and they're
the goodest of the guys exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Oh, Ben, I watched and researching for this. There's a
really cool documentary on YouTube called Atomic Cowboys. It's like
a little thirty minute doc about this whole situation, but
intersperses all of this amazing footage that you've probably seen.
Some of it is really idyllic, kind of like Ozzie
and Harriet type. You know, neighborhoods, and you know, all
(10:09):
that stuff interspersed with like stop drop and roll or
not stop dropping roll, duck and cover that kind that's
the one. Sorry, stop dropping roll is completely different. But
they had these things, these communities that were built situated
near these facilities. They were called atomic cities, and it
was like almost a point of pride to live in
these It was like you were part of the future,
(10:29):
you know. And all of these little, you know, pretty
much propaganda videos, let's be honest, are are really just
showing Oh and just like anyone else, Little Johnny's on
his way to school and here's you know, his mother, Margaret,
and oh and father's coming home from work at the plant.
You know, everything's honky darry here in Atomic City. And
it's absolutely covering up just the image there and that
(10:54):
associating it with that nationalism and that kind of sears
catalog kind of idealism. There's a real nasty underbelly going
on that we're going to get into that this was
all kind of trying to cover up, if not a
completely purposefully, definitely subconsciously.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'll never forget a DVD short film
series that I subscribed to a long time ago from
the makers of McSweeney's. It's called Walfin. I think a
Mission Control has seen some of those two. There was
one episode that had a damning look into the private
(11:32):
public partnerships. It's a paint commercial and you might be
able to find this on YouTube. And the paint commercial
actually shows is by a private paint company, and it
actually shows how great the paint that they produce is
because it can withstand certain aspects of a nuclear detonation.
(11:53):
And I think they got that footage because of a
partnership with the US government. Thinks were very sticky. Like
if you think if you think business and government are
way too friendly and corrupt in the modern day, first off,
you're right. Secondly, this is actually a little bit better
than it used to be in this regard.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Absolutely no separation of church and state in that regard.
Back in those days, I mean, Uncle Sam was very,
very very cozy with private industry and unfortunately feels like
we're rolling back to a situation that's starting to resemble
the forties a little bit in that respect nowadays, in
my opinion. But yeah, let's get more into what were
(12:35):
they building in there. It was used. They had two
thousand acres that were used for the testing and development
of rocket engines for the US space program and for
other weapons research advanced weapons research, and during its history,
more than thirty thousand rocket engine tests were conducted at
I'm going to crib a name. I saw a press
(12:57):
conference with some of the former employees. They call it
santas which that kind of day. So we're conducted there
at Santa Su.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, yep, thirty thousand. Now that counts all kinds of tests.
That counts, you know, actual launches to just like hey,
let's rev up the engine, see if it explodes. They
were also, as you mentioned, they were conducting a lot
of nuclear research. Over the course of forty years or so.
(13:25):
That one specific area at the complex, Area four would
eventually be home to ten different nuclear reactors, a fabrication
facility to make plutonium, a fuel facility for uranium, and
something called a hot labs that's a way to that's
where they remotely maybe machine parts or separate radioactive material.
(13:49):
And the reason they're doing it remotely, of course, is
because it is a death sentence to be exposed to
a lot of that stuff for a significant amount of time,
so we can understand why, why the US government, why
Uncle Sam was not in a hurry to tell the
public hey were building a nuclear site. We're trying to
(14:09):
be safe, but just just so you know, duck and
cover I guess, which doesn't work. Like you know, some
of our older audience members today, you may have gone
to school at the time when people were conducting those
nuclear attack drills, especially during like the Cuban missile crisis.
(14:31):
From what I understand, they told kids to just get
under their desk.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Maybe the desk that they were using were a much
higher quality than the desk we grew up with.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Yeah, it basically would generate some kind of Pompeii level
duck and covering skeletons. You know, that's kind of what
would happen there, I think. But they had little cartoon
turtles that we're telling you how to do it. So
who doesn't believe a cartoon turtle?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You know, I love I love a cartoon mascot. Yes,
stick those on anything, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
I'll do whatever they say literally, right as an adults,
we need a cartoon mascot for the show.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
So send your suggestions to Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
We'd love to check them out. But you know, this
place did not have a cartoon mascot. It was very
much not off the books, but it was very much
like a need to know basis as far as what
was going on. And it's no surprise that they were
(15:28):
doing that. That's not inherently evil because they you know,
you want to prevent rival governments from learning about your
nuclear process. You want to stop those leaks. But here's
the problem. Despite the fact, despite their intense efforts to
hide this from the public and from their rivals, the
(15:52):
truth came out and drips and drabs because people started
getting sick. What are we talking about? Well tell you,
after a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Yeah, authorities, as you said at the at the end
of the first half been or third whatever, I don't
know math. The research was hidden, it was obscured by
the government Santa suit. It required that level of discretion.
But hand in hand with that went some much less
(16:34):
savory shall we call it obfuscations. I'm using some five
dollars words today, And they in fact covered up and
hid several multiple disasters that had long standing effects on
employees and their families' lives.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
This is this is amazing. Okay, this is amazing and
the worst way. So if you ask before we get
into this, if we were all everybody listening and all
of us here, if we were just hanging out and
we asked everybody in the room, what are what are
the big nuclear disasters, we'd say stuff like Chernobyl. We'd
stay stuff like the nuclear accidents, not the bombings. We'd
(17:15):
see three mile islands, three mile Island of course, Fukushima
or something. This should be on that list. The first,
like the first huge nuclear reaction or accident, dates all
the way back to nineteen fifty nine. One of the
nuclear reactors, again just thirty miles away from Los Angeles,
(17:38):
partially suffered a meltdown. Workers tried to repair it, and
when they couldn't, the management of the of the facility said,
you know what, open the door of the reactor. Let
that radiation out into the air. This this means it
is virtually certain that that irradiated material spread to those
(17:59):
nearby commune we mentioned early, such as Canooga Park or
Semi Valley, Chatsworth, and they they did eventually, like more
than a month later, have some kind of press statement,
but it was very much.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Not the truth. Six weeks after the meltdown, the Atomic
Energy Commission, again the predecessor to the Department of Energy,
issued a statement saying that there had been a minor,
a little oopsie. They called it a fuel element failure,
but that there had been quote no release of radioactive
(18:37):
materials into the environment, and that just wasn't true. NASA, Yeah, no,
NASA and aerospace company Rocketdyne, which I love the name
of that. It sounds like something out of one of
the Fallout games, which, by the way, I'm downloading Fallout
seventy six right now. I'm really excited. Doing this research
made me crave that kind of nuclear wasteland, like nineteen
(18:58):
forties apocalyptic vine, So looking forward to playing that. But yeah,
Rocket Dime continued to use the site for thousands of
rocket tests like this was a non issue through the
nineties or the early nineties, nineteen ninety Those activities also
released all sorts of toxic chemicals into the air and
deposited them in the groundwater, the surface water as well,
(19:22):
and also the soil. All of this was also covered up.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, you could say it was buried. I don't know
why your kids are getting sick. Maybe you should be
a better parrot, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
These are the types of.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Terrible lies and misdirections that people in power can employ.
We mentioned that during its history, during the history of SSFL,
there was not just that one accident in nineteen fifty nine,
there were several nuclear accidents at the lab. But when
we mentioned Three Mile Islands, what we didn't mention is
(19:57):
that multiple experts believe that partial melt out Area four
could be the worst nuclear disaster in US history. If
you measure the amount of radiation released, it may have
released more radiation than what was released during Three Mile
NBC did some fantastic deep dive journalism on this with
(20:20):
some other sources, and I like the way they put it.
They said, the nineteen fifty nine Santus is on a
field laboratory sodium reactor experiments. Level is unknown, but it's
thought to have released two hundred and sixty times more
radiation than the Three Mile Island disaster. It is insane
(20:41):
that that was not all over the news. A three
mile by the way, occurred March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine.
So twenty years later and still probably didn't beat the
hidden record of SSFL. Can we just really quickly talk
about how radiation works.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I didn't really fully grasp it until I saw the
television special Chernobyl. They do such a good job of
explaining how it really damages your body. Basically, radiation particles
are like you can think of them as physical things.
They penetrate your body and damage your tissues. And if
(21:20):
you're bombarded with like high levels of radiation, as many
of the folks who were unfortunate enough to have been
in Chernobyl were, it will start to make you melt
from the inside out. For lack of a better expression,
I mean, you will get lesions on your skin. It
really is like some sights sci fi nightmare kind of
(21:40):
body horror, like David Cronenberg type stuff. But with just
a little bit of radiation. It might not be enough
for you to register it like physically like that, but
it can damage cells in your body and cause mutations
and cause you to get things like cancer. That's a
big one. And it's just because these things shoot at you.
(22:00):
And the way they describe it in the show is
like bullets, you know, they're like each one is like
a little radiation bullet, you know, and it depends on
where it hits. That kind of determines what the effects
will be and how dense the hail of bullets that
you're receiving is.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, And to explain what it means by a level
five event, I said three Mile Islands. The level five events,
this nineteen to fifty nine incident is probably higher. There
is something called the International Nuclear Event scale. It goes
from zero to seven, with zero being an anomaly with
(22:38):
no real safety consequence to level seven a major accident.
These are world changing events. Right now, there are only
officially two level seven disasters Chernobyl and Fukushima, so nineteen
eighty six and twenty eleven. But for something to be
a level five incident like three Mile Island, that means
(23:02):
it is an accident that has wider consequences, things that
go beyond the immediate environment. Means it can impact people around.
That means there will be at least several deaths. That
means that there will also be opportunity for more critical
failures in the future unless something's done immediately so that
(23:24):
it's a big deal. On a one out of seven,
this was at least a five, And we mentioned that
the management at the time just said, you know, open
the door, you let the radiation out, not because we're jerks,
but because this is the only way to prevent the
reactor from exploding. The employees were also given back tee
(23:46):
to clean off the walls, right.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Which is just basically just an antiseptic. I mean, it's
the same bactine you would spray on a booboo. You know. Look,
if your kid like skin, their need spray back team,
And this is what they would use to clean off
the stuff from the walls.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And then they used cotex pads for the floors. They
were sworn to silence Omerta. Don't tell anyone, not even
your spouse. That's just one disaster. There was another one
that occurred two years before, in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
And really quickly too. I mean there was when you
say Omerica, it was almost like it was this strong
arm kind of attitude where someone asked, there's in that
documentary I was talking about. One of the employees or
the lab workers asked like, can I tell my wife
about this? Like this is this seems like it would
affect her and my family, And they were like, you
(24:35):
will not breathe a word of this, like under you know,
implied threat. You know what I mean the tone he
said he was very scared for his safety because there
was like, you know, a military official that was kind
of like this strong man kind of in the background,
sort of looming large, and yeah, there was this implied threat.
(24:57):
For sure, you will not tell anyone about this.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I mean consider you know, once again it's the argument
of the greater good. What is one person or two people,
or one hundred people's lives worth when compared to nuclear supremacy.
They really thought that they could and should do anything
legal or illegal necessary to win first place in the
(25:22):
arms race. So that's why these things keep getting covered up.
The nineteen fifty seven case is hot lap, not a reactor. Again,
that's the stuff to remotely handle or machine radioactive metal.
This was a side of a fire that got out
of control, and the fire can transport these irradiated substances
(25:45):
much further than they normally would be. We also have
we also know for sure now in twenty twenty, we
know for sure that at least four of the site's
ten total nuclear reactors became accident sites at some point.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
In their career. Yeah, I mean, there were some interviews
in the documentary I keep referring to nuclear cowboys, I
think is what it's called. Highly recommend to check it out.
Some old stock interviews that were like testimonies. I think
I can't quite place the sources, but it was referred
to as a very slipshod operation, and you know, we
(26:23):
just know back in those days, standards weren't what they
are today. I'm sure they were doing the best they
could with what they had, I guess, but no, now,
this one's just really out of control. Bad Ben. I
think I may have told you. I used to work
for Georgia Public Radio and my beat was a facility
near where I lived in Augusta called the Savannah River Site,
which was actually built right around the same time as
(26:45):
as Santa Sue, and they refine nuclear material, you know,
for weapons, you know, for nuclear nuclear weapons payloads, and
then over time it was converted into play to reclaim
nuclear materials from you know, these kind of spent nuclear
(27:06):
cores or whatever from these from these weapons, and it
was part of the Atoms for Peace program where they
would actually kind of convert these weapons into material they
could then reuse, but it became a big source of
you know, activists kind of ire because they were dumping
radioactive materials into open pits in the ground. Then become
(27:28):
what's called superfund sites, which I always thought, you know,
that doesn't sound like super fun at all, But it's
fund with a D because it designates the kind of
government assistance that it is given to help clean up
these sites. And that is a big thing with this
that we'll get into a little later, but right away,
this idea of these very dangerous methods of disposing of
(27:50):
nuclear material at the sites becomes a big issue as well.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, So as I was saying, you know, I think
it's worth the time to walk through through the other
nuclear accidents. You can maybe call the nineteen fifty nine
sodium reactor, you can call that a disaster. But also
in March of nineteen fifty nine, just a few months
(28:14):
before the sodium reactor, the A six reactor experienced a
release of fission gases, so again contaminating the environment. In
sixty four, another reactor had damage to eighty percent of
its fuel. In sixty nine, another reactor had damage, luckily
(28:35):
only a third of its fuel, but again remember the
fuel is nuclear material. And then there was a fire
in nineteen seventy one, another.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Fire, another fire. Yeah, radioactive fire reminds you. And again
this the smoke and the heat really does a number
on carrying these particles, you know, far and wide right,
And this one involved combustible primary reactor coolant or contaminated
with mixed fission products. And these reactors also didn't have
(29:06):
containment structures. This is a big deal because that directly
puts the workers at risk. Because we'll get into a
little later, they weren't required to wear like hazmat suits.
They were wearing some form of protection, but it certainly
wasn't all encompassing. And the reactors didn't have containment structures.
(29:28):
They were essentially giant concrete domes. Those cooling towers that
surround most nuclear reactors, right, They didn't have that, so
it was just kind of emitting these particles into the air.
Now we get into the disposal part, which is just
you know, ridiculous. They were called burn pits, sodium burn pits.
(29:49):
There were multiple spills and contamination events involved with these,
and these burn pits were essentially open air pits that
were used for cleaning parts or components of the for
machinery that had been contaminated by radioactive sodium and was
also contaminated by the burning of radioactively and chemically contaminated items,
(30:10):
and very few, if any safety precautions were taken the
ones I was talking about at Savannah Riversite. They at
least kind of ligned them with some material like sort
of like a barrier against the groundwater or against the
you know, leaking leaching into the soil. But if I'm
not mistaken, Ben, these were just pits that were dug
right into the ground.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah. One thing I would say, to be absolutely fair
for these folks is that there were a lot of
things they didn't understand that we do know now in
the in the you know, in the realm of safety
around radioactive nuclear materials. But they they knew more than
enough to know that this was a horrible idea. I'd
(30:50):
like to put a human face on this by introducing
a guy named James Palmer. He may have showed up
in the in some other documentaries too, but he did
some interviews with journalists later. He was a former worker
at SSFL and he had a crew of twenty seven people.
Of those twenty seven people twenty two died of cancer.
(31:15):
Cancer is a horrible thing. It happens for a number
of reasons, but there was a clear correlation here. To
say otherwise is to willfully be ignorant. He described stuff
in this interview where he would come home from work
and he would be feeling, you know, kind of normal,
maybe a little pooped because he'd been working all day.
He would try to kiss his wife hello, and her
(31:35):
lips would be burned because of the chemicals he had
been breathing at work. They actually fished in one of
three ponds that were radiated, and sometimes the water was
so polluted that this being real life, the fish didn't
develop three eyes. They just died off and started floating
on the surface. And they would try to, like when
(31:56):
they were fishing, they would try to like wash the
fish with hydrogen proper side to neutralize any kind of contamination,
but obviously that doesn't work. He said that every single
water source there was contaminated. He sums it up in
an interview with Ivan Sure County Star by saying this
(32:18):
was a horror show. And you know, when we talked
about how they disposed of stuff, it just gets worse.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Yeah, And by the way, it's really fascinating that every
every source that I found about this story is from
the La Times or from somewhere out there in that
part of the country. It really was just not a
national news story. It's it's mind boggling, I mean, you know,
because now we're seeing multiple just absolutely egregious, you know,
(32:49):
events taking place at this facility, and they were covered
up and so back to the disposal sometimes And this
came from an interview. I believe it was with Paul
because he definitely did some interviews and made the rounds,
but there were a few others as well, so forgive
me if I'm mistaken there, but a gentleman who worked
(33:09):
in the site at the time many years later, fifty
years later, was doing this interview and talked about how
sometimes they would dispose of radioactive sodium by rowing bundles
of the stuff. Like I say bundles loosely, it's just
the term I'm using out into the middle of one
(33:30):
of those ponds in a small rowboat and then dropping
it into the water, and then the workers would turn
back and row ashore duck for cover and then peek
up like you would taking cover in like a shooter
game and fire a shot with a thirty hot six
rifle at that bundle out in the water. It reminds
me of some sort of twisted Viking funeral kind of
you know. And then it wouldn't like cause it to
(33:53):
explode by igniting a spark, No, it was the water
that would cause it to explode, because the water would
then penetrate the sodium and react violently. A massive explosion
would ensue. And they did this pretty frequently, and they
were supposed to be just quote unquote disposing of clean sodium,
(34:13):
but like you said, bem, oftentimes in those burn pits,
radioactive sodium would end up in there as well with
radiactive contamination. So this would leak into the groundwater, it
would create that smoke, the explosion that would carry it
into those bedroom communities, those atomic cities. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
And look, I know what a lot of us are
thinking right now when you hear that, you're thinking, but, hey,
aren't explosions cool. Yeah, that's subjectively true. Explosions are really cool,
but radiation is not. So you know, you can kind
of get a picture and implication here that this is
a bit of a diversion for some of these guys too,
(34:53):
because you get to see this massive explosion. But it's
not worth the price we paid. So if this was
all secret, if this was happening under the dark of night,
if people were being threatened to be quiet about it,
then how do we know about it today? How to
wane Cee send us an email? How are we getting
these facts? We'll tell you after we're from our sponsor.
(35:24):
We're back. So I mentioned earlier at the top of
the show that this cover up continued for quite a while,
you know, from the late forties on. But one thing
that I think stymied efforts to cover up these close
(35:44):
calls and this nuclear disaster is just simply the medical data.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
People who lived.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
In the area were getting cancer at a much higher
rate than you would expect out of a population. It
was at a level such that other people in the
area started to notice, you know what I mean, Like
six year olds don't usually have these kind of diseases,
and multiple ones don't. And I believe it wasn't until
(36:10):
the nineteen seventies that things started to come out, not
the full extent, but started to leak to the public.
And by that point, I would guess it was kind
of already an open secret in the region.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
What do you think. Yeah, it wasn't until November of
nineteen seventy nine that a k NBCTV report revealed that
evidence of that partial meltdown. I can't it's just shocking
to me. That's almost the nineteen eighties, and this has
been going on since the forties.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, yeah, And it may have been a situation where
I hate to say it, but it may have been
a situation where the journalist was allowed to cover it,
because I'm sure other people have been making inquiries for
some time, but maybe they were trying to get ahead
of the facts, you know, or ahead of the fallout.
(37:01):
Poor choice of words there, but you know, the social fallout.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Of this perfect choice of words there, Ben, And ironically,
I always misused that nineteen seventy nine was when the
three Mile Island disaster took place.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
So that's a perfect time to slide that in under
the radar, you know, And investigation since then have happened.
In nineteen eighty nine, the Department of Energy launched investigation
or concluded an investigation, and they said there was widespread
contamination radioactive and chemical contamination. Because remember we're talking thirty
(37:35):
thousand rocket tests that were spread across the Santa Susanna site.
It was riddled with it, and the report clearly pointed
to several cover ups over at least the past few decades.
This was reported, but as you said, primarily in local media,
and again this is almost nineteen ninety now, the local population,
(37:58):
the municipal governments, they reacted. The lawsuits started to roll in,
and people lobbied to shut down any continued nuclear activity
at the site, because remember that went on until two
thousand and six.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Yes, that's true. And on July twenty sixth of nineteen
ninety four, two scientists Otto k. Heimi and Larry A.
Pew were killed when the chemicals they were illegally burning
in those open pits, surprise, surprise, exploded. There was a
grand jury investigation and an FBI raid on the facility,
(38:33):
and three Rocket Dyne officials pled guilty to illegally storing
explosive materials. In June of two thousand and four, the
jury was, though deadlocked on the more serious charge, which
related to illegal burning of hazardous waste. And this isn't
burning trash in your backyard, my friends, this is not
(38:56):
leaf piles. You know, without a permit. This this is
a wanton disregard for not only the safety of your employees,
but of the public. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
And you know you have to wonder too whether there
is any corruption of the jury, right, any witness, intimidation
or tampering. Don't have solid proof of that, but I
I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical to think that that
could be in the.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
Cards A million percent.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, we have. We have also information on ongoing medical claims.
There's an epidemiologist named hal Morgenstern, and he conducted a
long term study between nineteen eighty eight and two thousand
and two. He found that people living within two miles
(39:48):
of the lab site are sixty percent more likely to
be diagnosed with certain specific cancers compared to residents living
just five miles from the site. So there there is
a clear correlation here.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Well, and what it's just a more extreme example, but
it's what they refer to as like the fallout zone.
You know, there is a range around this the the
area where this radiation radiates from that you know is
going to be more susceptible to this stuff. And then
you know, further away it's it's much difficult, much more difficult,
unless you know, something like wind patterns carry it farther
(40:25):
or you know, even with Fukushima, there was a concern
that birds were carrying radioactive materials outside of beyond that
that fallout zone. So yeah, this absolutely makes sense. And
in October of two thousand and six, the Santa Susanna
Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, which was you know, supposedly an
independent review board composed of scientists and researchers from around
(40:48):
the US, concluded that based on the available data and
computer models, contamination of the facility resulted in an estimated
two hundred and sixty cancer related deaths.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Yeah, there were multiple lawsuits that have been in the works.
Companies like Boeing have also reached settlements with some plaintiffs,
though the settlements remained controversial. There's an article in the
La Times called how one Woman's fight is helping workers
decades after Santa Susanna radiation exposure, and it talks about
(41:20):
this woman named Bonnie Clee, who worked for Rockadyne in
the sixties and seventies, has kind of really come forward
to champion the case of her fellow employees and co workers.
Who were affected by this. She started having pain in
her bladder and she went and saw a doctor who
(41:41):
told her that she had cancer and it was likely
due to occupational hazards. And there have been payouts thus far,
but there was even an issue where the Department of
Labor had in fact denied many of the claims filed
by these workers who were stricken with cancer. And this
(42:04):
was under a program called the two thousand Energy Employees
Occupational Illness Program Act. So the burden of proof was
just obviously very very difficult to achieve, and she helped
compile letters and press releases and news articles and all
of this stuff and helped kind of get that decision
overturned so folks were able to receive restitution for this condition.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Let me go back in so in the notes of
my research, I just mentioned companies like Boeing reaching settlements,
but I also want to mention I want to hit
that line about multiple lawsuits being actively in the works.
The story doesn't have an ending yet. One plaint of
(42:51):
Margaret and Galosso she sued Boeing, but she said her
attorneys went behind her back and accepted a thirty million
dollars settlement with Boeing, but they never got her approval,
and she thinks they were doing it because they get
a sixty percent cut after you know their costs and fees,
which can happen, and then they are also there are
(43:14):
also problems with how settlements are being distributed to people,
like some plaintiffs are only receiving, you know, at the
end of the day, something like thirty thousand dollars. And
in the United States, if you have a serious medical condition,
thirty thousand dollars is not going to solve your problem.
You sadly right, exactly, so you can see how these
(43:39):
settlements are rightly controversial. I just want to make sure
that I emphasize that these are ongoing legal battles.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
That's right. And just to quickly backtrack to Bonnie Klee
when she assembled all those materials and those petitions and
delivered them to the federal government in two thousand and seven,
As I said, it did lead to to a change
and the ability for folks to get those claims accepted.
But it's fascinating. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and
(44:08):
Health or NIOSH created a special designation just for that
field lab and this two hundred and eighty acre area
four that we've talked about extensively, and this was for
workers who were exposed for at least two hundred and
fifty days between January first of nineteen fifty five and
(44:29):
January thirty first of nineteen fifty eight, and then it
was eventually expanded to nineteen sixty five. So it's cool
to see at least, you know, an individual being able
to make some change, But then you're right, been the
quality of those payouts kind of trumps the quantity at times, right.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, So the employees were, you know, probably the most
directly exposed, but you know, innocent residents were exposed. People
in real life were getting sick and they had no
idea why there's a no angle here that should be
considered more closely, especially as it affects the future in
(45:07):
a way that a lot of people don't think about.
As you might recall conspiracy realist California, like other parts
of the world, has recently been plagued by wildfires, and
many indications to tell us or lead us to believe that,
depending on weather conditions, these wildfires may become a semi
regular or annual thing. At two a little bit before
(45:31):
two thirty. On November eighth, twenty eighteen, just a few
years ago, South California, Edison reported a circuit outage at
the Susanna site, and two minutes later there were flames
seen in a canyon near that location. There was a
guy there, a reporter named Stu Mundel working for k
(45:53):
CAL nine. He was overhead in a helicopter took a
picture before the fire broke out. It turned out that
had before this fire began, they had disabled and taken
apart a lot of the fire suppression systems at the site,
so people couldn't even people couldn't even fight small fires
at this location. And this led La County Deputy fire
(46:18):
chief at the time, Vince Payinna, to say they could
have stopped what would later become known as the Woolsey
Forest fire. By one estimate, this fire by itself released
forty thousand tons of ash contaminated with radiation and chemicals
and with you know, if there's not an extensive cleanup,
(46:39):
which still has not happened, then we have to reasonably
assume something worse could happen the next time a wildfire
rolls through town. This is dangerous.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
This is.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
You know, like the old Harrison Ford film. This is
clear and present danger.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
Get off my plane. Mean, that's a different way that
was what was that Air Force one? Sorry I forgot
about that way memory. He was the he was the
ask of the president. He was the president, but he,
like you know, took on the terrors single handedly. But
it's true, Ben, and all of this still is ongoing.
Like you said, the story's not over in terms of
(47:19):
the folks whose lives were upended by this, you know,
who lost loved ones. And also the site itself is
still not cleaned up. That there was an agreement that
was made with the federal government to clean up the site,
but then it was determined that it wasn't realistic, and
it was it was kind of thrown out. It's still
(47:41):
kind of in limbo right now, and it's really not
clear as to when this will take place. You know,
I go back to Savannah riversite really quick, just just
for some like firsthand knowledge of the efforts there. It
is an ongoing process cleaning up the Savannah River site.
They have to test wildlife, Ben constantly. They tag turtles
by drilling little holes in their shells and putting these
(48:03):
trackers in there and they find the same turtle and
then test them for radiation to see to track how
effective their cleanup efforts have been over time. And because
the turtles go out and wander, you know, and they
could potentially pick it up. And there are these open
pits that I was talking about that they've had to
fill in and clean up and all of that, and
(48:24):
so that is ongoing and as is this, but it
doesn't appear here been that there are even really any
measures put in place at all. At least Savannah River
site's been sort of you know, on track and making
ongoing efforts to clean up that stuff. But it really
is a slippery slope there.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Savannah also has a nuclear weapon missing somewhere off the
coast in the water, so they have got they've got
a lot to struggle with. So going back to SSFL,
going back to the Santo Susanna Field Laboratory, I want
to note there was a EPA study in twenty twelve,
pretty extensive, cost taxpayers around forty one million dollars, and
(49:05):
they showed that there are astronomical levels of radiation in
the area. This is we're going to get into the
weeds maybe a little bit, but this is important because
we all need to be aware of just how much
radiation we're talking about here. The presence of things like
strontium ninety tests two hundred and eighty four times higher
(49:25):
than normal, Caesium one thirty seven is over nine thousand
times higher than normal, plutonium two thirty nine ninety two
times higher. The hits keep coming, and these are these
measures are pulled like twenty four feet below the soil surface,
so that's super deep. That's a lot of penetration. And
(49:48):
you know, both private entities like Boeing and the US
government have continued to say they're going to do something.
Boeing currently owns most of the site, they bought it
in nineteen ninety six. They want to turn it into
something they call an open space habitat. But really, you know,
when you look at how much, how much energy, and
(50:13):
how much money is going to have to go into
the effort to fix this, you can see how I
get the feeling a lot of people are passing the
bill around, you know what I mean. There's a guy
who probably knows the most in the world, at least
officially about SSFL is a guy named Dan Hirsch. Professor
(50:33):
Dan Hirsch. He used to direct Santa Cruz's program on
environmental nuclear policy. He says everything in the area is
heavily contaminated. It has approximately one hundred different unique toxic
chemicals in the soil, including you know, we mentioned the
radiation or the radioactive stuff, but we didn't mention the
(50:55):
heavy metals like mercury, the volatile organic compounds VOS. Fun
fact about VOCs probably my favorite fact about VOCs. That's
what forms new car smell.
Speaker 4 (51:08):
Oh wow, yeah, I did not know that at all.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Man, you're hearing the heat or you're you're smelling, sorry,
my cinisation is coming out. You're smelling the the chemicals
that you know that release when stuff inside your car
is heated on a hot day. That's why a newer
car will smell like voc or sometimes your car just
if it's hot, will smell like that.
Speaker 4 (51:32):
Is it meant to kind of what's the word looking for?
Kind of mimic like the smell of like hot leather seats.
You know, it's kind of what I've always assumed.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
The new car smell is.
Speaker 4 (51:44):
Yeah, or maybe it's just like hot seats in general,
and like all the chemicals that go into like coating
those seats and the fabric and all that stuff to
treat it to make it like stain resistant. It really does.
Just it's weird that we people like it because they
associate it with this concept of own a thing or
of like, you know, something that's new, But it really
is just a chemical smell.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Yeah, and it's bad for you over time. But you know,
I'm a little bit of a gearhead. I love that stuff.
I used to have it just sprayed around the house
until we did an episode on car stuff and I
learned exactly what I was snorting, So lesson learned there.
Luckily that didn't make my house super contaminated. But Professor
(52:27):
Hirsch points out that in his opinion, and again he's
very well acquainted with this, the santas Is on a
Field Experiment site is Again this is just his opinion
saying this. He says it's the most contaminated site in
the United States by any measure. And he thinks that
(52:47):
even the studies that have been released on the correlation
between cancer and chronic health conditions, the one in two
thousand and six, he thinks that still isn't the whole truth.
He thinks there's much more to the story. We're just
scratching the scandalous surface of this this cover up. I
(53:09):
don't I guess it's not ongoing because people can talk
about it now, but it's not resolved.
Speaker 4 (53:15):
Yeah, because the study that was released in two thousand
and six estimated the between three hundred and eighteen hundred
that's a pretty wide swath people developed cancer as a
result of the nineteen fifty nine meltdown. That's the meltdown,
not the other incidents, the or the thirty thousand rocket
engine tests that we talked about at the top of
the show. So absolutely just scratching the super scandalous surface
(53:41):
of these cover ups, which are not conspiracy theories, my friends,
these are that is what this is. This is a
conspiracy to cover up a very real thing that happened
that the public should have known about, but that they
did not want you to know.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yes, and this story unfortunately doesn't end. This is ongoing.
So we want to thank Wayne for hipping us to this.
At the risk, at the risk of sounding like I
live in too much of a weird cover up bubble,
I'm usually aware of these things. So I learned a
(54:18):
lot in the research for this episode, and I want
to know many people living there in southern California. I
want a resolution too. We want to hear your thoughts.
Were you aware of this, do you have personal experience
with it? Let us know why you're at it. Why
not let us know about any other nuclear or industrial
cover ups in your neck of the Global Woods. You
(54:40):
can find us pretty much anywhere on the internet where
on Twitter, We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook. Shout out
to our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. You
can follow us there. You can also follow us as individuals.
Speaker 4 (54:52):
You sure can. I just want to say I was
completely unaware of the story as well, and just blown
away by the fact that it was just these regional
I mean La Times obviously a big publication, but it
was all sources from right around that part of the world.
So if you have stories like this, please let us
know in all those ways, Ben said, And if you
do want to find us as individuals, you can find
me on Instagram where I am at how Now, Noel Brown, I.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Am at Ben Bowlin hsw on Twitter. I am at
Ben Bolan on Instagram. Matt is on Instagram, but he's
kinda he's got a weird conspiracy of his own about it.
You'll have to follow the breadcrumbs. Let us know what
you find. If you don't like social media, we get it.
(55:37):
We got a phone number you can call us anytime.
We are one eight three three std WYTK. But hold on,
you might say, what do I do if I hate
social media? What if I I hate phones? We've got
good news for you, folks. We have one last way
to contact us any old time you want, twenty four
(55:59):
to seven every day of the year, and that is
our email address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
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