May 29, 2020 • 55 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):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Noel. Our writer Die Matt
Frederick is actually on vacation today. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission
controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to
know now you don't know. I was thinking of a
(00:47):
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 techn oology doesn't
come from a textbook. It actually comes from The Simpsons.
Was that your experience? Oh? Absolutely? I mean, just like
(01:08):
that iconic shape of those uh 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. Um. But that iconic Simpson's opening where
you trace Homer's activities like from you know, his uh
seat at the nuclear power plant in Springfield where he
like pushes the button or whatever. I guess I'm confusing
(01:29):
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 Homers 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 where you kind of trace,
(01:51):
you know, the movement of this nuclear rod through that
opening sequence. Yeah, I like what you said. I like
what you pointed out about how Homer is a bit
of a use the word buffoon. Uh. He is kind
of an incompoop. He's he's lovable, but he's definitely oh fish.
And despite being one of the dumbest guys in Springfield,
he somehow has a job at a nuclear planet that
(02:14):
routinely experiences low level or even high level disasters. And
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, and
like the rods just escape. It's sort of the joke, right,
I mean, it really is kind of lampoon ing this
whole culture of cover up in American nuclear power, uh,
(02:38):
from things like Three Mile Island to even like, you know,
whether the Russian attempts to contain the disaster at Chernobyl,
and this idea that you know, those in power can
never be wrong and if we say it didn't happen,
then it didn't happen as long as no one finds
out right, right, I bet Monty Burns would probably love
the novel nineteen four just as much as us, but
(03:02):
for very different reasons. 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 funny as a plot line in the Simpsons. Wait,
you mean three eyed fish aren't cuddly, cute little creatures
that that just flop around with a smile. You know,
(03:24):
I have to point out maybe there's an episode for
another day, but I was immensely um 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 certainly not one
that's cuddly that you could model like a plushy toy
after right, right, agreed, So we are going somewhere with
(03:48):
this today, conspiracy realists. We were inspired to make today's
episode via an email from Wayne ce Uh. Wayne Cee
wrote to us a while back, and you said, have
covered the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory. Is this something you
could cover? And Wayne, you go on to mention that
you were surprised. So very few people have heard about this,
(04:12):
and in fact, peep behind the curtain, Uh, we had
not heard of this either. So here are the facts.
The Santa Susannah Field Laboratory UM is was les slow. Yeah,
I can use past tense in terms when it was operational,
a massive complex of research and development uh labs located
in Semi Valley, which is in southern California. Uh, and
(04:35):
it has a long history. UM. It really is one
of those classic kind of the Atomic Age kind of
you know, nineteen forties kind of facilities where it was
really you know, the dawning of a new era and
all that. Uh, and nuclear power was the wave of
the future. Uh. So yeah, it's been operational doing one
thing or another since around nineteen forty seven, UH. Two
(04:55):
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 part of the hills
above Semi Valley. And at first the purpose of the
site was to test rocket engines, and they did this
for a long time. From nineteen forty nine to two
(05:18):
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, UH is some high
grade stuff. You know, it's surprised, it's complicated. It's also
very dangerous in terms of the contaminants that you know,
(05:41):
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, UH, the Field
Lab what we'll call Santa Susanna s f S s
(06:01):
f L. For this, they added something they called Area
four and from nineteen fifty three to at least nineteen eighty.
Area of four was home to nuclear reactors from nineteen
sixty six to nineteen The U. S Government actually sponsored
a liquid metal research center at the side. Is that
I mean they were making T one thousands ben Is
(06:22):
that what that means? 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
(06:44):
slide in your local playground. And you know, speaking of
civilian stuff, that's one interesting part of s s f L.
Santa Susana is only about seven miles northwest of Canoga Park.
It's only thirty miles northwest of downtown l A, this
huge population center. Yeah, it's true. Um, there's a community
(07:08):
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. Yeah, like I said an
(07:32):
earlier episode, I think q tab waits what's the building
in there? This? You're right, this site was the home
of numerous secret projects that were private public partnerships. So
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 that there was
(07:53):
this weird facility on the you know, on the other
side of of the park or in town, and they
just went about their daily lives. But we have to remember,
first off, it's uh 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, right
(08:16):
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 um, you know, people tended to
trust the government more in general, so they were like,
I mean, yeah, no one saw it coming, but uh
but because of that, you know, there's I think there's
a sense of inherent nationalism. They're like, we may not
(08:38):
know what they're doing, but we're the good guys and
they're the goodest of the guys exactly, oh Ben, that
I watched in researching for this. There's a really cool
documentary on on YouTube called Atomic Cowboys. UM. It's like
a little thirty minute doc about this whole situation. But
interspersed as all of this amazing footage that you've probably seen,
some of it is really idyllic, kind of like Aussie
(09:02):
and Harriett type, you know, neighborhoods and you know, all
that stuff interspersed with like stop dropping 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
(09:22):
point of pride to live in these It was like
you were part of the future, 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 and here's uh, you know, his mother Margaret, and
oh and father's coming home from work at the plant.
You know, everything's hunky dorry here in Atomic City. UM.
(09:45):
And it's absolutely covering up just the image there and
that associating it with that nationalism and that kind of
uh sears catalog kind of idealism. There's a real nasty
underbelly going on that we're gonna get into that this
was all kind of trying to cover up, if if
not completely purposefully, definitely subconsciously. Oh yeah, yeah, I'll never forget.
(10:10):
UM a DVD short film series that I subscribed to
a long time ago from the makers of McSweeney's. It's
called walf In. I think UM Mission Control has seen
some of those two Uh you can there was one
episode that had uh a damning look into the private
public partnerships. It's a paint commercial, uh And you might
(10:33):
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.
And I think they got that footage because of a
partnership with the US government. Things were very sticky. Like
(10:57):
if you think if you think business and government are
way too friendly and corrupt in the modern day, first off,
your right. Secondly, this is actually a little bit better
than it used to be in this regard. Absolutely no
separation of church and state in that regard. Back in
those days, I mean, Uncle Sam was very, very very
(11:19):
cozy with private industry and 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. Um,
but yeah, let's get more into what were they building
in there. It was used, They had two thousand acres
that were used, um for the testing and development of
rocket engines for the US space program and for other
(11:42):
UM weapons research, advanced weapons research. And during its history,
more than thirty thousand rocket engine tests were conducted at
I'm gonna I'm gonna crib and a name. I saw
a press conference with some of the former employees. They
call it Santa Sue, which that kind of day. So
we're conducted there at Santa Sue. Yeah, Yeah, thirty thousand,
(12:04):
Now that that counts all all kinds of tests. That counts,
you know, actual launches to just like hey, let's rev
up the engine and see if it explodes. Uh. They
were also, as we mentioned, they were conducting a lot
of nuclear research over the course of forty years or so,
that one specific area at the complex, Area four would
(12:24):
eventually be home to ten different nuclear reactors, a fabrication
facility to make plutonium, a fuel facility for uranium, and
something called a hot lab. That's that's a way to
that's where they remotely maybe machine parts or separate radioactive material.
(12:45):
And uh, 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, we were building a nuclear site. Um,
we're trying to be safe, but just just so you know, uh,
(13:09):
duck and cover, I guess, which doesn't work. Like you,
you know, some of our older audience members today, you
you may have gone to school at the time when
people were conducting those nuclear attack drills, especially during the
Cuban missile crisis. From what I understand, they told kids
(13:29):
to just get under their desk. I don't know. Maybe
the desk that they were using were a much higher
quality than the desk we grew up with. Yeah, it
basically would generate some kind of Pompey level uh duck
and covering skeletons. You know, that's kind of what would
happen there, I think. But they had little cartoon turtles
(13:49):
that we're telling you how to do it. So who
who doesn't believe a cartoon turtle? You know, I love
I love a cartoon mascot. Yes, stick those on anything,
you know, I'll do whatever they say literally as an adult.
We need a cartoon mascot for the show, So send
your suggestions to conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Uh,
we'd love to check them out. But you know, this
(14:12):
place did not have a cartoon mascot. It was very
much um, not off the books, but it was. 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 doing that. That's not inherently evil because
they you know, you want to prevent rival governments from
(14:33):
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 truth came out and drips and drabs because people
started getting sick. What are we talking about. We'll tell
(14:56):
you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it
gets crazy. Yeah, authorities. Um, as you said at the
at the end of the first half, been the third whatever.
I don't know, math Um. The research was hidden, it
was obscured by the government. Um. Santa suit required that
(15:21):
level of discretion. But hand in hand with that went
some much less savory shall we call it obfuscations using
some five dollar words today, um, And they in fact
covered up and hid several multiple disasters that had long
(15:44):
standing effects on employees and their families lives. This is
this is amazing. Okay, this is amazing in 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, um, what are what are the big
(16:05):
nuclear disasters? We'd say stuff like Chernobyl. We'd stay stuff like, um,
the nuclear accidents, not the bombings. We'd say say tree
Mile Islands, three Mile Island, of course, uh, Fukushima or something.
This should be on that list. The first like the
first huge nuclear reaction date or accident dates all the
(16:26):
way back to nineteen fifty nine, one of the nuclear reactors,
again just thirty miles away from Los Angeles, partially suffered
a meltdown. Workers tried to repair it, and when they couldn't,
they're the management of the of the facility said, you
know what, opened the door of the reactor let that
(16:48):
radiation out into the air. This this means it is
virtually certain that that I radiated material spread to those
nearby communities we mentioned early, such as uh, Canoga Park,
Semi Valley, Chatsworth, and they they did eventually, like more
than a month later, have some kind of press statement,
(17:10):
but it was very much, um, 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 a little oopsie. Uh.
They called it a fuel element failure, but that there
(17:31):
had been quote no release of radioactive materials into the environment,
and and that just wasn't true. Uh. 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. Um which, by the way, I'm downloading
Fallout seventy six. Right now, I'm really excited that's doing
this research made me crave that kind of nuclear waste
(17:54):
land like nineteen forties apocalyptic vibe. So looking forward to
playing that. But yeah, Rocketdyne continue you to use the
site for thousands of rocket tests like this was a
non issue through the nineties or the early nineties. Those activities,
UM also released all sorts of toxic chemicals into the
air and deposited them in the groundwater, the surface water
(18:17):
as well, and also the soil. All of this was
also covered up. Yeah, you could say it was buried. UM,
I don't know why your kids are getting sick. Maybe
you should be a better parent, etcetera, etcetera. These are
the types of terrible lies, uh in misdirections that people
in power can employ. We mentioned that during its history,
(18:39):
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 that multiple experts believe that
partial meltdown area of four could be the worst nuclear
(19:01):
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. Uh NBC did some fantastic
deep dive journalism on this with some other sources, and
I like the way they put it. They said, the
(19:22):
nineteen fifty nine Santa Susana 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 that that was not all
over the news. Three Mile, by the way, occurred March nine,
(19:45):
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. I 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
(20:09):
of them as physical things. They penetrate your body and
damage your tissues. And if 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
(20:30):
lesions on your skin if it really is like some
site sci fi nightmare kind of 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 um damage cells
in your body and cause mutations and cause you to
(20:51):
get things like cancer. That's a big one. And it's
just because these things shoot at you. And the way
they describe it in the 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. Uh. The hail of bullets that you're
receiving is m Yeah. And to explain what I mean
(21:15):
by a level five events, it said three Mile Islands.
It's the level five events. Uh, this this 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 no no real safety consequence to level seven
(21:39):
major accident. Uh. These are world changing events. Uh right now,
they're only officially two level seven disasters Chernobyl and Fukushima
son But for something to be a level five incident
like three Mile Islands, that means it is an accident
(22:00):
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. Uh. That means that there
will also be uh opportunity for more critical failures in
the future unless something he's done immediately, so that that
(22:21):
it's a big deal. On a one out of seven,
this was at least the five, and we mentioned that
the management at the time just said, you know, open
the door. Uh, 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
(22:41):
back team to clean off the walls, right, which is
just basically just an antiseptic. I mean it's the same
back team you would spray on a boo boo, you know,
if you're looking, if your kid like skin, their need
spray back team. And this is what they would use
to clean off this, uh the stuff from the walls.
And then they use co text pads for the floors.
They were sworn to silence Omerta. Don't tell anyone, not
(23:03):
even your spouse. That's just one disaster. There was another
one that occurred two years before in nineteen seven, and
and really quickly too. I mean there was when you
say Omerta, it was almost like it was 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, and I'm can I tell my
(23:26):
wife about this? Like this is that seems like it
would affect her and my family. And they were like,
you 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, military official that was
kind of like the strong man kind of in the background, uh,
(23:47):
sort of looming large. And yeah, there was there was
this implied um threat. For sure, you will not tell
anyone about this. I mean consider you know, once again
it's the argument of the greater good. What is one person,
or two people, or a hundred people's lives worth when
compared to nuclear supremacy. They really thought that they could
(24:11):
and should do anything legal or illegal necessary too when
first place in the arms race. So that's why these
things keep getting covered up. The ven case is hot lab,
not a not a reactor. Again, that's the stuff to
remotely handle or machine radioactive metal. This was a side
(24:34):
of a fire that got out of control, and the
fire can transport these irradiated substances much further than they
normally would be. Uh. We also have we we also
know for sure now we know for sure that at
least four of the sites ten total nuclear reactors became
(24:56):
accident sites at some point in their care year. Yeah.
I mean there there were some interviews in the documentary
I keep referring to, uh, nuclear cowboys, I think is
what it's called. Highly recommend you check it out. Um,
some old stock interviews that were like test testimonies, I think.
I can't quite place the sources, but it was referred
to as a very slipshod operation. Um. And you know,
(25:20):
we 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 now
now this one is just really out of control. Bad um,
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
(25:40):
same time as as Santa Sue, and they refine nuclear material, um,
you know, to weapons, you know, for nuclear nuclear weapons payloads, um.
And then over time it was converted into a place
to reclaim um nuclear materials from you know, these kind
(26:01):
of spent nuclear 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 uh, it became a
big source of you know, activists kind of ire because
they were dumping um radioactive materials into open pits in
(26:22):
the ground. Uh, then become what's called super fund 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
(26:45):
very dangerous methods of disposing of nuclear material at the
sites becomes a big issue as well. Yeah, So as
Al was saying, you know, I think it's worth the
time to walk through the other nuclear accidents. You can
maybe you can maybe call the nineteen fifty nine UH
sodium reactor, you can call that a disaster. But also
(27:08):
in March of nineteen fifty nine, just a few months
before the Sodio reactor, UH, the A E six reactor
experienced a release of fission gases, so again contaminating the environment.
In sixty four, another reactor had damage to eight of
its fuel. In sixty nine, another reactor had damage, luckily
(27:32):
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 fire, another fire. Yeah, radioactive
fire reminds you. And again this the smoke and the
heat really does a number on carrying these particles, uh,
you know, far and wide right. Uh. And this one
(27:52):
involved combustible primary reactor coolant or knack uh contaminated with
mixed fission products. Uh. And these reactors also didn't have
containment structures. This is a big deal because the that
directly puts the workers at risk. Because we'll get into
a little later. They weren't required to wear like hazmat suits.
(28:15):
They were wearing some form of protection, but it certainly
wasn't all encompassing. And the reactors didn't have containment structures. Uh.
They were essentially um, giant concrete domes. Uh those cooling
towers that surround most nuclear reactors, right, they didn't have that,
So it was just kind of emitting these particles into
(28:35):
the air. Now we get into the disposal part, which
is just you know, ridiculous. Um. They were called burn pits, um,
sodium burn pits. Uh. 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 different machinery that had been contaminated by
(28:58):
radioactive sodium um and was also contaminated by the burning
of radioactively and chemically contaminated items, and very few, if any,
safety precautions were taken. The ones I was talking about
a savannah riverside, they at least kind of lined them
with some material like sort of like a barrier against
the groundwater against the you know, leaking leaching into the soil.
(29:21):
But if I'm not mistaken. Then these were just pits
that were dug right into the ground. 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 knew more than enough to know that this
(29:44):
was a horrible idea. I'd 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 years later.
He was a former worker at SSFL and he had
a crew of twenty seven people. Of those twenty seven people,
(30:08):
twenty two died of cancer. Cancer is a horrible thing.
It happens for a number of reasons, but there is
a clear correlation here. To say otherwise is to willfully
be ignorant. He know, he he described stuff in this
interview where like he would come home from work and
he would be feeling, you know, kind of normal, maybe
a little pooped because you know, he'd been working all day.
(30:29):
He would try to kiss his wife hello, and her
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
(30:49):
on the surface. Uh. And they would try to, like
when they were fishing, they would try to like wash
the fish with hydrogen peroxide to 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 um Mature County Star by saying,
(31:14):
this was a horror show. And you know, we talked
about how they disposed of stuff. It just gets worse. Yeah.
And and and by the way, it's really fascinating that every
every source that I found about this story is from
the l A Times or from somewhere out there in
that part of the country. It really was just not
(31:34):
a national news story. It's it's mind boggling, I mean,
you know, because now we're seeing multiple uh, just absolutely
egregious um, you know, events taking place at this facility. UM,
and they were covered up and so UM. Back to
the disposal, sometimes and this came from from interview. I
(31:55):
believe it was with Palmer, because he definitely did some
some interviews and and uh may the rounds, but there
were a few others as well, So forgive me if
I'm mistaken there, but UM a gentleman who worked in
the site at the time. UM many years later, fifty
years later, uh was was doing this interview and talked
about how sometimes they would dispose of radioactive sodium by
(32:19):
rowing bundles of the stuff. As I say bundles loosely,
it's just the term I'm using out into the middle
of one of those ponds in a small rowboat and
then dropping it into the water. And then the workers
would turn back and row to shore duck for cover
and then peek up like you would take a cover
in like a shooter game, and fire a shot with
(32:40):
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. Uh. And then it
wouldn't like cause it to 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 man massive and explosion would ensue. Um and
(33:03):
and they did this pretty frequently, and they were supposed
to be just quote unquote disposing of clean sodium, but
like you said them, oftentimes in those burn pits, radioactive
sodium would end up in there as well with radioactive contamination.
So this would leak into the groundwater, it would create
that smoke, the explosion that would carry it into those
(33:24):
bedroom communities, those atomic cities. Yep, yep. And look, I
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 objectively true. Explosions are really cool, but radiation is
not so. Uh So, you know, you can kind of
get a picture and implication here that this is a
(33:47):
bit of a diversion for some of these guys too,
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
Wayne see send us an email? How are we getting
(34:10):
these facts? Will tell you after we're from our sponsor.
We're back. So I mentioned earlier at the top of
the show that this cover up continue for quite a while,
you know, from the late forties on. Uh. But one
(34:34):
one thing that I think stymied efforts to cover up
these uh, these close calls in this nuclear disaster is
just simply the medical data people who lived in the area.
We're 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,
(34:58):
you know what I mean, like six year old just
don't usually have these kind of diseases. Are multiple ones don't.
And I believe it wasn't until 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. What do you think. Yeah, it
(35:20):
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. Yeah, yeah,
and it may have been a situation where I hate
(35:43):
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. Um,
but maybe they were trying to get ahead of the facts,
you know, or get ahead of the fallout. Poor choice
of words there, but you know, the social fall out
of this perfect choice of words there been. And ironically
I always misused that nineteen seventy nine was when the
(36:07):
three Mile Island disaster took place, so that's a perfect
time to slide that in under the radar, you know.
And an investigation since then have happened in the Department
of Energy launched investigation or concluded an investigation, and they
said there was widespread contamination radioactive and chemical contamination because
(36:30):
remember we're talking thirty 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 there's
almost now, uh, the local population, the municipal governments, they reacted.
(36:57):
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 six. Yes, that's true.
And on July to scientists Otto Kahimi and Larry A.
(37:17):
Pew were killed when the chemicals they were illegally burning
in those open pits, surprise, surprise, exploded. Uh. There was
a grand jury investigation and an FBI raid on the facility,
and three Rocketdyne officials pled guilty UH to UH illegally
story explosive materials in June of two thousand and four. UH.
(37:40):
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 leaf piles, you know, without a permit. This is
a wanton disregard for not only the safety of your employees,
(38:01):
but of of the public. Agreed. And you know you
have to wonder too whether there is any um corruption
of the jury, right, any witness intimidation or tampering. We
don't have solid proof of that, but I I don't know.
Maybe I'm cynical to think that that could be in
(38:21):
the cards a million. Yeah, we have we have also
um information on ongoing medical claims. There's an epidemiologist named
how Morgan Stern, and he conducted a long term study
between nineteen and two thousand two. He found that people
(38:43):
living within two miles 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 in here. Well,
and it's it's what it's just a more extreme example,
(39:03):
but it's what they referred 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 diffic much more difficult, um,
unless you know, something like wind patterns carry it farther
or you know, even with Fukushima, there was a concern
(39:25):
that birds were carrying radioactive materials outside of beyond that
that fallout zone. UM. So yeah, this absolutely makes sense
that in October of two thousand six, the Santa Susana
Field Laboratory Advisory Panel UM, which was you know, supposedly,
an independent review board composed of scientists and researchers from
around the US, UH concluded that, based on the available
(39:47):
data and computer models, contamination of the facility resulted in
an estimated two hundred and sixty cancer related deaths. Uh. Yeah,
there were multiple lawsuits that have in in the works.
Companies like Boeing have also reached settlements with some plaintiffs,
though the settlements remained controversial. There there's an article in
(40:08):
the l A Times called how One Woman's fight is
helping workers decades after Santa Susana radiation exposure, and it
talks about this woman named Bonnie Clee, who worked for
Rockodyne in the sixties and seventies has kind of really
come forward, UH to champion the case of her fellow
(40:29):
UH employees and co workers who you know, were affected
by this. She um started having pain in her bladder
and she went and saw a doctor who told her that, uh,
she had cancer and it was likely due to occupational
hazards UM. And there have been UH payouts thus far,
but there was even an issue where the Department of
(40:51):
Labor had in fact denied many of the claims UM
filed by these workers who were stricken with cancer. UM
and this 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. UM
and she helped compile letters and press releases and news
(41:15):
articles and all of this stuff and helped kind of
get that decision overturned so folks were able to receive
restitution for this condition. Let me let me go back
in um so in in the notes of my research,
I just mentioned companies like Boeing reaching UH settlements, but
(41:37):
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 plaintiff, Margaret and Glosso,
she sued Bowing, but she said her attorneys went behind
her back and accepted a thirty million dollars settlement with Boweing,
but they never got her approval, and she thinks they
(42:00):
were doing it because they get a sixty percent cut
after you know their costs and fees, which can happen
and then UM. They are also they're 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,
(42:22):
if you have a serious medical condition, thirty thousand dollars
is not going to solve your problem, you know, badly,
right exactly, so you can see how these settlements are
rightly controversial. I just want to make sure they emphasize
that these are ongoing legal battles, that's right, UM. And
(42:44):
And just to to quickly backtrack to Bonnie clee Um
when she assembled all those materials and those petitions and
delivered them to the federal government in two thousand seven.
As I said, it did lead to a change and
and the ability for for folks to get those claims accepted.
But it's fascinating. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and
(43:05):
Health or niosh UM created a special designation just for
that field lab and this two d eight acre area
four UM that we've talked about extensively UM. And this
was for workers UM who were exposed for at least
two hundred and fifty days between January one of nineteen
fifty five and January thirty one of ninety eight. And
(43:28):
then it was eventually expanded to nineteen sixty five. So
it's cool to see at least, you know, uh, an
individual being able to make some change. But then you're right,
then the quality of those payouts kind of trump's the
quantity at times. Right. Yeah, So, uh, the employees were
you know, probably the most directly exposed, but you know,
(43:49):
innocent residents were exposed. People in real life were getting
sick and they had no idea why. There's another angle
here that should be considered more work closely, especially um
as it affects the future in 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
(44:11):
recently been plagued by wildfires, and many indications uh 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 little bit before two thirty on
November eight eighteen, just a few years ago, South California,
(44:34):
Edison reported a circuit outage at the Susannah 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 Cal nine. He was
overhead in a helicopter took a picture before the fire
(44:54):
broke out. It turned out that Boeing 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 l A County Deputy fire chief at
(45:15):
the time, Vince Paina, 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 clean up, which
(45:36):
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. This is uh um, you know,
like the old Harrison Ford film. This is clear and
present danger. Get off my plane. That's a different movie.
(45:56):
That was what was that Air Force one? So I
forgot remember he was that he was the he was
the asking president. He was the president. But he, like
you know, took on the terrorists single handedly Um, But
it's true, Ben, and all of this still is ongoing.
Like you said, the story is not over in terms
of the folks whose lives were up ended by this,
(46:18):
you know, who lost loved ones. And also the site
itself is still not cleaned up. Um 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 uh, kind of in limbo right now,
(46:39):
and it's really not clear as to when this will
take place. You know, I go back to Savannah River
site 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 tagged turtles by drilling little holes in
their shells and putting these trackers in there, and they
(47:02):
find the same turtle and then test them for radiation
to see to track how effective their clean up efforts
have been over time. And because they're the turtles go
out and wander, you know, and they pick it 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 so that
is ongoing and as is this, but it doesn't appear
(47:24):
here been that there are even really any measures put
in place at all. At least Savannah Riverside has been
sort of you know, on track and and making ongoing
efforts to clean up that stuff. But uh, it really
is a slippery slope there. Savenna also has a nuclear
weapon missing somewhere off the coast and the water, so
they have got they've got a lot to struggle with.
(47:46):
So going back to SSFL, going back to the Santo
Susanna Field Laboratory, I want to know what There was
a e p A study in two thousand twelve, pretty extensive,
cost taxpayers around forty one million dollars, and they showed
that there are astronomical levels of radiation in the area.
And this is We're gonna get into the weeds maybe
(48:07):
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 nine
D test two D and eighty four times higher than
normal caesum one seven is over nine thousand times higher
(48:27):
than normal plutonium to thirty nine two times higher. The
hits keep coming and these are these measures are pulled
like twenty four ft below the soil surface, so that's
super deep. That's a lot of penetration, and um, you know,
both private entities like Boeing and the US government have
(48:49):
continued to say they're going to do something. Boeing currently
owns most of the site, they bought it in nine 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 how much money
(49:11):
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. It's uh there there's a guy
who's who probably knows the most in the world, at
least officially about SSFL is a guy named Dan Hirsch,
Professor Dan Hirsch. He used to direct Santa Cruz's program
(49:33):
on environmental nuclear policy. He says everything in the area
is heavily contaminated. It has approximately a 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 heavy metals like mercury, the volatile organic compounds v
(49:56):
o C s. Fun fact about v o C s
probably my favor for a fact about v O C s. Uh,
that's what forms new car smell. Oh wow, Yeah, I
did not know that at all. Ben, you're hearing the
heat or you're you're smelling, Sorry, my cynisesa is coming out.
You're smelling the the chemicals that, uh, you know that
(50:17):
release when stuff inside your car is heated on a
hot day. That's why a newer car will smell like
v O C or sometimes your car just if it's hot,
will smell like that. But is it meant to kind
of uh what's the word, looking for a kind of
mimic like the smell of like hot leather seats. You know,
it's kind of what I've always assumed the new car
(50:40):
smell is. Yeah, or maybe it's just like hot seats
in general, and like all the chemicals that go into
like coating those seats in 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 associated with this concept of owning a
thing or of like, you know, something that's new, But
it really is just to chemical smell. Yeah, and it's
(51:02):
and it's bad for you over time. But you know,
I'm a little bit of your head. 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. They're
luckily that didn't make my house super contaminated. But Professor
(51:23):
Hirsch points out that in his opinion, and again he's
very well acquainted with this, the Santa Susana 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. Uh. And he thinks that even
(51:44):
the um 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,
which scratching the scandalous surface of this this cover up.
(52:05):
I don't I guess it's not ongoing because people can
talk about it now, but it's not resolved. Yeah, because
the study that was released in two thousand and six
estimated between three hundred and eighteen hundred that's a pretty
wide swath people developed cancer as a result of the meltdown.
That's the meltdown, not the other incidents, uh, the or
(52:27):
the thirty thousand rocket engine tests that we talked about
at the top of the show. So absolutely just scratching
the super scandalous surface of of these cover ups, which
are not conspiracy theories, my friends, these are that That
is what this is. This is a conspiracy to cover
up a very real thing that happened that the public
(52:48):
should have known about, but that they did not want
you to know. Yes, and this story unfortunately doesn't end,
this is ongoing. So we want to thank Wayne for
for hipping us to this. At the risk of um
at the risk of sounding like I live in too
(53:08):
much of a weird cover up bubble, I'm I'm usually
aware of these things. So I learned a lot in
the research for this episode, and I want to know,
like 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?
(53:28):
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 can find
us pretty much anywhere on the Internet. We're on Twitter,
where on Instagram? Where 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. You shook,
(53:49):
can I just want to say I was completely unaware
of the story as well, and and and just blown
away by the fact that it was just these regional
I mean l a times obviously a big publication, but
it was all horses 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,
(54:11):
Noel Brown, I am at Ben Boland hs W on Twitter,
I am at Ben Boland on Instagram. Matt is on Instagram,
but he's 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. Uh. If you don't
like social media, we get it. We've got a phone number.
(54:35):
You can call us any time. We are one eight
three three st d w y t K. But hold on,
you might say, what what do I do if I
hate social media? What? What? 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 seven every day of the year, and that
(54:57):
is our email address where we are conspiracy at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know
(55:22):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Noel. Our writer Die Matt
Frederick is actually on vacation today. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission
controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to
know now you don't know. I was thinking of a
(00:47):
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 techn oology doesn't
come from a textbook. It actually comes from The Simpsons.
Was that your experience? Oh? Absolutely? I mean, just like
(01:08):
that iconic shape of those uh 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. Um. But that iconic Simpson's opening where
you trace Homer's activities like from you know, his uh
seat at the nuclear power plant in Springfield where he
like pushes the button or whatever. I guess I'm confusing
(01:29):
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 Homers 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 where you kind of trace,
(01:51):
you know, the movement of this nuclear rod through that
opening sequence. Yeah, I like what you said. I like
what you pointed out about how Homer is a bit
of a use the word buffoon. Uh. He is kind
of an incompoop. He's he's lovable, but he's definitely oh fish.
And despite being one of the dumbest guys in Springfield,
he somehow has a job at a nuclear planet that
(02:14):
routinely experiences low level or even high level disasters. And
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, and
like the rods just escape. It's sort of the joke, right,
I mean, it really is kind of lampoon ing this
whole culture of cover up in American nuclear power, uh,
(02:38):
from things like Three Mile Island to even like, you know,
whether the Russian attempts to contain the disaster at Chernobyl,
and this idea that you know, those in power can
never be wrong and if we say it didn't happen,
then it didn't happen as long as no one finds
out right, right, I bet Monty Burns would probably love
the novel nineteen four just as much as us, but
(03:02):
for very different reasons. 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 funny as a plot line in the Simpsons. Wait,
you mean three eyed fish aren't cuddly, cute little creatures
that that just flop around with a smile. You know,
(03:24):
I have to point out maybe there's an episode for
another day, but I was immensely um 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 certainly not one
that's cuddly that you could model like a plushy toy
after right, right, agreed, So we are going somewhere with
(03:48):
this today, conspiracy realists. We were inspired to make today's
episode via an email from Wayne ce Uh. Wayne Cee
wrote to us a while back, and you said, have
covered the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory. Is this something you
could cover? And Wayne, you go on to mention that
you were surprised. So very few people have heard about this,
(04:12):
and in fact, peep behind the curtain, Uh, we had
not heard of this either. So here are the facts.
The Santa Susannah Field Laboratory UM is was les slow. Yeah,
I can use past tense in terms when it was operational,
a massive complex of research and development uh labs located
in Semi Valley, which is in southern California. Uh, and
(04:35):
it has a long history. UM. It really is one
of those classic kind of the Atomic Age kind of
you know, nineteen forties kind of facilities where it was
really you know, the dawning of a new era and
all that. Uh, and nuclear power was the wave of
the future. Uh. So yeah, it's been operational doing one
thing or another since around nineteen forty seven, UH. Two
(04:55):
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 part of the hills
above Semi Valley. And at first the purpose of the
site was to test rocket engines, and they did this
for a long time. From nineteen forty nine to two
(05:18):
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, UH is some high
grade stuff. You know, it's surprised, it's complicated. It's also
very dangerous in terms of the contaminants that you know,
(05:41):
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, UH, the Field
Lab what we'll call Santa Susanna s f S s
(06:01):
f L. For this, they added something they called Area
four and from nineteen fifty three to at least nineteen eighty.
Area of four was home to nuclear reactors from nineteen
sixty six to nineteen The U. S Government actually sponsored
a liquid metal research center at the side. Is that
I mean they were making T one thousands ben Is
(06:22):
that what that means? 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
(06:44):
slide in your local playground. And you know, speaking of
civilian stuff, that's one interesting part of s s f L.
Santa Susana is only about seven miles northwest of Canoga Park.
It's only thirty miles northwest of downtown l A, this
huge population center. Yeah, it's true. Um, there's a community
(07:08):
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. Yeah, like I said an
(07:32):
earlier episode, I think q tab waits what's the building
in there? This? You're right, this site was the home
of numerous secret projects that were private public partnerships. So
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 that there was
(07:53):
this weird facility on the you know, on the other
side of of the park or in town, and they
just went about their daily lives. But we have to remember,
first off, it's uh 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, right
(08:16):
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 um, you know, people tended to
trust the government more in general, so they were like,
I mean, yeah, no one saw it coming, but uh
but because of that, you know, there's I think there's
a sense of inherent nationalism. They're like, we may not
(08:38):
know what they're doing, but we're the good guys and
they're the goodest of the guys exactly, oh Ben, that
I watched in researching for this. There's a really cool
documentary on on YouTube called Atomic Cowboys. UM. It's like
a little thirty minute doc about this whole situation. But
interspersed as all of this amazing footage that you've probably seen,
some of it is really idyllic, kind of like Aussie
(09:02):
and Harriett type, you know, neighborhoods and you know, all
that stuff interspersed with like stop dropping 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
(09:22):
point of pride to live in these It was like
you were part of the future, 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 and here's uh, you know, his mother Margaret, and
oh and father's coming home from work at the plant.
You know, everything's hunky dorry here in Atomic City. UM.
(09:45):
And it's absolutely covering up just the image there and
that associating it with that nationalism and that kind of
uh sears catalog kind of idealism. There's a real nasty
underbelly going on that we're gonna get into that this
was all kind of trying to cover up, if if
not completely purposefully, definitely subconsciously. Oh yeah, yeah, I'll never forget.
(10:10):
UM a DVD short film series that I subscribed to
a long time ago from the makers of McSweeney's. It's
called walf In. I think UM Mission Control has seen
some of those two Uh you can there was one
episode that had uh a damning look into the private
public partnerships. It's a paint commercial, uh And you might
(10:33):
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.
And I think they got that footage because of a
partnership with the US government. Things were very sticky. Like
(10:57):
if you think if you think business and government are
way too friendly and corrupt in the modern day, first off,
your right. Secondly, this is actually a little bit better
than it used to be in this regard. Absolutely no
separation of church and state in that regard. Back in
those days, I mean, Uncle Sam was very, very very
(11:19):
cozy with private industry and 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. Um,
but yeah, let's get more into what were they building
in there. It was used, They had two thousand acres
that were used, um for the testing and development of
rocket engines for the US space program and for other
(11:42):
UM weapons research, advanced weapons research. And during its history,
more than thirty thousand rocket engine tests were conducted at
I'm gonna I'm gonna crib and a name. I saw
a press conference with some of the former employees. They
call it Santa Sue, which that kind of day. So
we're conducted there at Santa Sue. Yeah, Yeah, thirty thousand,
(12:04):
Now that that counts all all kinds of tests. That counts,
you know, actual launches to just like hey, let's rev
up the engine and see if it explodes. Uh. They
were also, as we mentioned, they were conducting a lot
of nuclear research over the course of forty years or so,
that one specific area at the complex, Area four would
(12:24):
eventually be home to ten different nuclear reactors, a fabrication
facility to make plutonium, a fuel facility for uranium, and
something called a hot lab. That's that's a way to
that's where they remotely maybe machine parts or separate radioactive material.
(12:45):
And uh, 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, we were building a nuclear site. Um,
we're trying to be safe, but just just so you know, uh,
(13:09):
duck and cover, I guess, which doesn't work. Like you,
you know, some of our older audience members today, you
you may have gone to school at the time when
people were conducting those nuclear attack drills, especially during the
Cuban missile crisis. From what I understand, they told kids
(13:29):
to just get under their desk. I don't know. Maybe
the desk that they were using were a much higher
quality than the desk we grew up with. Yeah, it
basically would generate some kind of Pompey level uh duck
and covering skeletons. You know, that's kind of what would
happen there, I think. But they had little cartoon turtles
(13:49):
that we're telling you how to do it. So who
who doesn't believe a cartoon turtle? You know, I love
I love a cartoon mascot. Yes, stick those on anything,
you know, I'll do whatever they say literally as an adult.
We need a cartoon mascot for the show, So send
your suggestions to conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Uh,
we'd love to check them out. But you know, this
(14:12):
place did not have a cartoon mascot. It was very
much um, not off the books, but it was. 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 doing that. That's not inherently evil because
they you know, you want to prevent rival governments from
(14:33):
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 truth came out and drips and drabs because people
started getting sick. What are we talking about. We'll tell
(14:56):
you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it
gets crazy. Yeah, authorities. Um, as you said at the
at the end of the first half, been the third whatever.
I don't know, math Um. The research was hidden, it
was obscured by the government. Um. Santa suit required that
(15:21):
level of discretion. But hand in hand with that went
some much less savory shall we call it obfuscations using
some five dollar words today, um, And they in fact
covered up and hid several multiple disasters that had long
(15:44):
standing effects on employees and their families lives. This is
this is amazing. Okay, this is amazing in 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, um, what are what are the big
(16:05):
nuclear disasters? We'd say stuff like Chernobyl. We'd stay stuff like, um,
the nuclear accidents, not the bombings. We'd say say tree
Mile Islands, three Mile Island, of course, uh, Fukushima or something.
This should be on that list. The first like the
first huge nuclear reaction date or accident dates all the
(16:26):
way back to nineteen fifty nine, one of the nuclear reactors,
again just thirty miles away from Los Angeles, partially suffered
a meltdown. Workers tried to repair it, and when they couldn't,
they're the management of the of the facility said, you
know what, opened the door of the reactor let that
(16:48):
radiation out into the air. This this means it is
virtually certain that that I radiated material spread to those
nearby communities we mentioned early, such as uh, Canoga Park,
Semi Valley, Chatsworth, and they they did eventually, like more
than a month later, have some kind of press statement,
(17:10):
but it was very much, um, 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 a little oopsie. Uh.
They called it a fuel element failure, but that there
(17:31):
had been quote no release of radioactive materials into the environment,
and and that just wasn't true. Uh. 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. Um which, by the way, I'm downloading
Fallout seventy six. Right now, I'm really excited that's doing
this research made me crave that kind of nuclear waste
(17:54):
land like nineteen forties apocalyptic vibe. So looking forward to
playing that. But yeah, Rocketdyne continue you to use the
site for thousands of rocket tests like this was a
non issue through the nineties or the early nineties. Those activities,
UM also released all sorts of toxic chemicals into the
air and deposited them in the groundwater, the surface water
(18:17):
as well, and also the soil. All of this was
also covered up. Yeah, you could say it was buried. UM,
I don't know why your kids are getting sick. Maybe
you should be a better parent, etcetera, etcetera. These are
the types of terrible lies, uh in misdirections that people
in power can employ. We mentioned that during its history,
(18:39):
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 that multiple experts believe that
partial meltdown area of four could be the worst nuclear
(19:01):
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. Uh NBC did some fantastic
deep dive journalism on this with some other sources, and
I like the way they put it. They said, the
(19:22):
nineteen fifty nine Santa Susana 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 that that was not all
over the news. Three Mile, by the way, occurred March nine,
(19:45):
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. I 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
(20:09):
of them as physical things. They penetrate your body and
damage your tissues. And if 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
(20:30):
lesions on your skin if it really is like some
site sci fi nightmare kind of 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 um damage cells
in your body and cause mutations and cause you to
(20:51):
get things like cancer. That's a big one. And it's
just because these things shoot at you. And the way
they describe it in the 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. Uh. The hail of bullets that you're
receiving is m Yeah. And to explain what I mean
(21:15):
by a level five events, it said three Mile Islands.
It's the level five events. Uh, this this 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 no no real safety consequence to level seven
(21:39):
major accident. Uh. These are world changing events. Uh right now,
they're only officially two level seven disasters Chernobyl and Fukushima
son But for something to be a level five incident
like three Mile Islands, that means it is an accident
(22:00):
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. Uh. That means that there
will also be uh opportunity for more critical failures in
the future unless something he's done immediately, so that that
(22:21):
it's a big deal. On a one out of seven,
this was at least the five, and we mentioned that
the management at the time just said, you know, open
the door. Uh, 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
(22:41):
back team to clean off the walls, right, which is
just basically just an antiseptic. I mean it's the same
back team you would spray on a boo boo, you know,
if you're looking, if your kid like skin, their need
spray back team. And this is what they would use
to clean off this, uh the stuff from the walls.
And then they use co text pads for the floors.
They were sworn to silence Omerta. Don't tell anyone, not
(23:03):
even your spouse. That's just one disaster. There was another
one that occurred two years before in nineteen seven, and
and really quickly too. I mean there was when you
say Omerta, it was almost like it was 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, and I'm can I tell my
(23:26):
wife about this? Like this is that seems like it
would affect her and my family. And they were like,
you 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, military official that was
kind of like the strong man kind of in the background, uh,
(23:47):
sort of looming large. And yeah, there was there was
this implied um threat. For sure, you will not tell
anyone about this. I mean consider you know, once again
it's the argument of the greater good. What is one person,
or two people, or a hundred people's lives worth when
compared to nuclear supremacy. They really thought that they could
(24:11):
and should do anything legal or illegal necessary too when
first place in the arms race. So that's why these
things keep getting covered up. The ven case is hot lab,
not a not a reactor. Again, that's the stuff to
remotely handle or machine radioactive metal. This was a side
(24:34):
of a fire that got out of control, and the
fire can transport these irradiated substances much further than they
normally would be. Uh. We also have we we also
know for sure now we know for sure that at
least four of the sites ten total nuclear reactors became
(24:56):
accident sites at some point in their care year. Yeah.
I mean there there were some interviews in the documentary
I keep referring to, uh, nuclear cowboys, I think is
what it's called. Highly recommend you check it out. Um,
some old stock interviews that were like test testimonies, I think.
I can't quite place the sources, but it was referred
to as a very slipshod operation. Um. And you know,
(25:20):
we 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 now
now this one is just really out of control. Bad um,
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
(25:40):
same time as as Santa Sue, and they refine nuclear material, um,
you know, to weapons, you know, for nuclear nuclear weapons payloads, um.
And then over time it was converted into a place
to reclaim um nuclear materials from you know, these kind
(26:01):
of spent nuclear 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 uh, it became a
big source of you know, activists kind of ire because
they were dumping um radioactive materials into open pits in
(26:22):
the ground. Uh, then become what's called super fund 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
(26:45):
very dangerous methods of disposing of nuclear material at the
sites becomes a big issue as well. Yeah, So as
Al was saying, you know, I think it's worth the
time to walk through the other nuclear accidents. You can
maybe you can maybe call the nineteen fifty nine UH
sodium reactor, you can call that a disaster. But also
(27:08):
in March of nineteen fifty nine, just a few months
before the Sodio reactor, UH, the A E six reactor
experienced a release of fission gases, so again contaminating the environment.
In sixty four, another reactor had damage to eight of
its fuel. In sixty nine, another reactor had damage, luckily
(27:32):
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 fire, another fire. Yeah, radioactive
fire reminds you. And again this the smoke and the
heat really does a number on carrying these particles, uh,
you know, far and wide right. Uh. And this one
(27:52):
involved combustible primary reactor coolant or knack uh contaminated with
mixed fission products. Uh. And these reactors also didn't have
containment structures. This is a big deal because the that
directly puts the workers at risk. Because we'll get into
a little later. They weren't required to wear like hazmat suits.
(28:15):
They were wearing some form of protection, but it certainly
wasn't all encompassing. And the reactors didn't have containment structures. Uh.
They were essentially um, giant concrete domes. Uh those cooling
towers that surround most nuclear reactors, right, they didn't have that,
So it was just kind of emitting these particles into
(28:35):
the air. Now we get into the disposal part, which
is just you know, ridiculous. Um. They were called burn pits, um,
sodium burn pits. Uh. 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 different machinery that had been contaminated by
(28:58):
radioactive sodium um and was also contaminated by the burning
of radioactively and chemically contaminated items, and very few, if any,
safety precautions were taken. The ones I was talking about
a savannah riverside, they at least kind of lined them
with some material like sort of like a barrier against
the groundwater against the you know, leaking leaching into the soil.
(29:21):
But if I'm not mistaken. Then these were just pits
that were dug right into the ground. 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 knew more than enough to know that this
(29:44):
was a horrible idea. I'd 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 years later.
He was a former worker at SSFL and he had
a crew of twenty seven people. Of those twenty seven people,
(30:08):
twenty two died of cancer. Cancer is a horrible thing.
It happens for a number of reasons, but there is
a clear correlation here. To say otherwise is to willfully
be ignorant. He know, he he described stuff in this
interview where like he would come home from work and
he would be feeling, you know, kind of normal, maybe
a little pooped because you know, he'd been working all day.
(30:29):
He would try to kiss his wife hello, and her
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
(30:49):
on the surface. Uh. And they would try to, like
when they were fishing, they would try to like wash
the fish with hydrogen peroxide to 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 um Mature County Star by saying,
(31:14):
this was a horror show. And you know, we talked
about how they disposed of stuff. It just gets worse. Yeah.
And and and by the way, it's really fascinating that every
every source that I found about this story is from
the l A Times or from somewhere out there in
that part of the country. It really was just not
(31:34):
a national news story. It's it's mind boggling, I mean,
you know, because now we're seeing multiple uh, just absolutely
egregious um, you know, events taking place at this facility. UM,
and they were covered up and so UM. Back to
the disposal, sometimes and this came from from interview. I
(31:55):
believe it was with Palmer, because he definitely did some
some interviews and and uh may the rounds, but there
were a few others as well, So forgive me if
I'm mistaken there, but UM a gentleman who worked in
the site at the time. UM many years later, fifty
years later, uh was was doing this interview and talked
about how sometimes they would dispose of radioactive sodium by
(32:19):
rowing bundles of the stuff. As I say bundles loosely,
it's just the term I'm using out into the middle
of one of those ponds in a small rowboat and
then dropping it into the water. And then the workers
would turn back and row to shore duck for cover
and then peek up like you would take a cover
in like a shooter game, and fire a shot with
(32:40):
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. Uh. And then it
wouldn't like cause it to 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 man massive and explosion would ensue. Um and
(33:03):
and they did this pretty frequently, and they were supposed
to be just quote unquote disposing of clean sodium, but
like you said them, oftentimes in those burn pits, radioactive
sodium would end up in there as well with radioactive contamination.
So this would leak into the groundwater, it would create
that smoke, the explosion that would carry it into those
(33:24):
bedroom communities, those atomic cities. Yep, yep. And look, I
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 objectively true. Explosions are really cool, but radiation is
not so. Uh So, you know, you can kind of
get a picture and implication here that this is a
(33:47):
bit of a diversion for some of these guys too,
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
Wayne see send us an email? How are we getting
(34:10):
these facts? Will tell you after we're from our sponsor.
We're back. So I mentioned earlier at the top of
the show that this cover up continue for quite a while,
you know, from the late forties on. Uh. But one
(34:34):
one thing that I think stymied efforts to cover up
these uh, these close calls in this nuclear disaster is
just simply the medical data people who lived in the area.
We're 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,
(34:58):
you know what I mean, like six year old just
don't usually have these kind of diseases. Are multiple ones don't.
And I believe it wasn't until 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. What do you think. Yeah, it
(35:20):
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. Yeah, yeah,
and it may have been a situation where I hate
(35:43):
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. Um,
but maybe they were trying to get ahead of the facts,
you know, or get ahead of the fallout. Poor choice
of words there, but you know, the social fall out
of this perfect choice of words there been. And ironically
I always misused that nineteen seventy nine was when the
(36:07):
three Mile Island disaster took place, so that's a perfect
time to slide that in under the radar, you know.
And an investigation since then have happened in the Department
of Energy launched investigation or concluded an investigation, and they
said there was widespread contamination radioactive and chemical contamination because
(36:30):
remember we're talking thirty 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 there's
almost now, uh, the local population, the municipal governments, they reacted.
(36:57):
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 six. Yes, that's true.
And on July to scientists Otto Kahimi and Larry A.
(37:17):
Pew were killed when the chemicals they were illegally burning
in those open pits, surprise, surprise, exploded. Uh. There was
a grand jury investigation and an FBI raid on the facility,
and three Rocketdyne officials pled guilty UH to UH illegally
story explosive materials in June of two thousand and four. UH.
(37:40):
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 leaf piles, you know, without a permit. This is
a wanton disregard for not only the safety of your employees,
(38:01):
but of of the public. Agreed. And you know you
have to wonder too whether there is any um corruption
of the jury, right, any witness intimidation or tampering. We
don't have solid proof of that, but I I don't know.
Maybe I'm cynical to think that that could be in
(38:21):
the cards a million. Yeah, we have we have also
um information on ongoing medical claims. There's an epidemiologist named
how Morgan Stern, and he conducted a long term study
between nineteen and two thousand two. He found that people
(38:43):
living within two miles 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 in here. Well,
and it's it's what it's just a more extreme example,
(39:03):
but it's what they referred 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 diffic much more difficult, um,
unless you know, something like wind patterns carry it farther
or you know, even with Fukushima, there was a concern
(39:25):
that birds were carrying radioactive materials outside of beyond that
that fallout zone. UM. So yeah, this absolutely makes sense
that in October of two thousand six, the Santa Susana
Field Laboratory Advisory Panel UM, which was you know, supposedly,
an independent review board composed of scientists and researchers from
around the US, UH concluded that, based on the available
(39:47):
data and computer models, contamination of the facility resulted in
an estimated two hundred and sixty cancer related deaths. Uh. Yeah,
there were multiple lawsuits that have in in the works.
Companies like Boeing have also reached settlements with some plaintiffs,
though the settlements remained controversial. There there's an article in
(40:08):
the l A Times called how One Woman's fight is
helping workers decades after Santa Susana radiation exposure, and it
talks about this woman named Bonnie Clee, who worked for
Rockodyne in the sixties and seventies has kind of really
come forward, UH to champion the case of her fellow
(40:29):
UH employees and co workers who you know, were affected
by this. She um started having pain in her bladder
and she went and saw a doctor who told her that, uh,
she had cancer and it was likely due to occupational
hazards UM. And there have been UH payouts thus far,
but there was even an issue where the Department of
(40:51):
Labor had in fact denied many of the claims UM
filed by these workers who were stricken with cancer. UM
and this 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. UM
and she helped compile letters and press releases and news
(41:15):
articles and all of this stuff and helped kind of
get that decision overturned so folks were able to receive
restitution for this condition. Let me let me go back
in um so in in the notes of my research,
I just mentioned companies like Boeing reaching UH settlements, but
(41:37):
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 plaintiff, Margaret and Glosso,
she sued Bowing, but she said her attorneys went behind
her back and accepted a thirty million dollars settlement with Boweing,
but they never got her approval, and she thinks they
(42:00):
were doing it because they get a sixty percent cut
after you know their costs and fees, which can happen
and then UM. They are also they're 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,
(42:22):
if you have a serious medical condition, thirty thousand dollars
is not going to solve your problem, you know, badly,
right exactly, so you can see how these settlements are
rightly controversial. I just want to make sure they emphasize
that these are ongoing legal battles, that's right, UM. And
(42:44):
And just to to quickly backtrack to Bonnie clee Um
when she assembled all those materials and those petitions and
delivered them to the federal government in two thousand seven.
As I said, it did lead to a change and
and the ability for for folks to get those claims accepted.
But it's fascinating. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and
(43:05):
Health or niosh UM created a special designation just for
that field lab and this two d eight acre area
four UM that we've talked about extensively UM. And this
was for workers UM who were exposed for at least
two hundred and fifty days between January one of nineteen
fifty five and January thirty one of ninety eight. And
(43:28):
then it was eventually expanded to nineteen sixty five. So
it's cool to see at least, you know, uh, an
individual being able to make some change. But then you're right,
then the quality of those payouts kind of trump's the
quantity at times. Right. Yeah, So, uh, the employees were
you know, probably the most directly exposed, but you know,
(43:49):
innocent residents were exposed. People in real life were getting
sick and they had no idea why. There's another angle
here that should be considered more work closely, especially um
as it affects the future in 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
(44:11):
recently been plagued by wildfires, and many indications uh 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 little bit before two thirty on
November eight eighteen, just a few years ago, South California,
(44:34):
Edison reported a circuit outage at the Susannah 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 Cal nine. He was
overhead in a helicopter took a picture before the fire
(44:54):
broke out. It turned out that Boeing 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 l A County Deputy fire chief at
(45:15):
the time, Vince Paina, 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 clean up, which
(45:36):
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. This is uh um, you know,
like the old Harrison Ford film. This is clear and
present danger. Get off my plane. That's a different movie.
(45:56):
That was what was that Air Force one? So I
forgot remember he was that he was the he was
the asking president. He was the president. But he, like
you know, took on the terrorists single handedly Um, But
it's true, Ben, and all of this still is ongoing.
Like you said, the story is not over in terms
of the folks whose lives were up ended by this,
(46:18):
you know, who lost loved ones. And also the site
itself is still not cleaned up. Um 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 uh, kind of in limbo right now,
(46:39):
and it's really not clear as to when this will
take place. You know, I go back to Savannah River
site 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 tagged turtles by drilling little holes in
their shells and putting these trackers in there, and they
(47:02):
find the same turtle and then test them for radiation
to see to track how effective their clean up efforts
have been over time. And because they're the turtles go
out and wander, you know, and they pick it 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 so that
is ongoing and as is this, but it doesn't appear
(47:24):
here been that there are even really any measures put
in place at all. At least Savannah Riverside has been
sort of you know, on track and and making ongoing
efforts to clean up that stuff. But uh, it really
is a slippery slope there. Savenna also has a nuclear
weapon missing somewhere off the coast and the water, so
they have got they've got a lot to struggle with.
(47:46):
So going back to SSFL, going back to the Santo
Susanna Field Laboratory, I want to know what There was
a e p A study in two thousand twelve, pretty extensive,
cost taxpayers around forty one million dollars, and they showed
that there are astronomical levels of radiation in the area.
And this is We're gonna get into the weeds maybe
(48:07):
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 nine
D test two D and eighty four times higher than
normal caesum one seven is over nine thousand times higher
(48:27):
than normal plutonium to thirty nine two times higher. The
hits keep coming and these are these measures are pulled
like twenty four ft below the soil surface, so that's
super deep. That's a lot of penetration, and um, you know,
both private entities like Boeing and the US government have
(48:49):
continued to say they're going to do something. Boeing currently
owns most of the site, they bought it in nine 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 how much money
(49:11):
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. It's uh there there's a guy
who's who probably knows the most in the world, at
least officially about SSFL is a guy named Dan Hirsch,
Professor Dan Hirsch. He used to direct Santa Cruz's program
(49:33):
on environmental nuclear policy. He says everything in the area
is heavily contaminated. It has approximately a 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 heavy metals like mercury, the volatile organic compounds v
(49:56):
o C s. Fun fact about v o C s
probably my favor for a fact about v O C s. Uh,
that's what forms new car smell. Oh wow, Yeah, I
did not know that at all. Ben, you're hearing the
heat or you're you're smelling, Sorry, my cynisesa is coming out.
You're smelling the the chemicals that, uh, you know that
(50:17):
release when stuff inside your car is heated on a
hot day. That's why a newer car will smell like
v O C or sometimes your car just if it's hot,
will smell like that. But is it meant to kind
of uh what's the word, looking for a kind of
mimic like the smell of like hot leather seats. You know,
it's kind of what I've always assumed the new car
(50:40):
smell is. Yeah, or maybe it's just like hot seats
in general, and like all the chemicals that go into
like coating those seats in 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 associated with this concept of owning a
thing or of like, you know, something that's new, But
it really is just to chemical smell. Yeah, and it's
(51:02):
and it's bad for you over time. But you know,
I'm a little bit of your head. 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. They're
luckily that didn't make my house super contaminated. But Professor
(51:23):
Hirsch points out that in his opinion, and again he's
very well acquainted with this, the Santa Susana 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. Uh. And he thinks that even
(51:44):
the um 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,
which scratching the scandalous surface of this this cover up.
(52:05):
I don't I guess it's not ongoing because people can
talk about it now, but it's not resolved. Yeah, because
the study that was released in two thousand and six
estimated between three hundred and eighteen hundred that's a pretty
wide swath people developed cancer as a result of the meltdown.
That's the meltdown, not the other incidents, uh, the or
(52:27):
the thirty thousand rocket engine tests that we talked about
at the top of the show. So absolutely just scratching
the super scandalous surface of of these cover ups, which
are not conspiracy theories, my friends, these are that That
is what this is. This is a conspiracy to cover
up a very real thing that happened that the public
(52:48):
should have known about, but that they did not want
you to know. Yes, and this story unfortunately doesn't end,
this is ongoing. So we want to thank Wayne for
for hipping us to this. At the risk of um
at the risk of sounding like I live in too
(53:08):
much of a weird cover up bubble, I'm I'm usually
aware of these things. So I learned a lot in
the research for this episode, and I want to know,
like 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?
(53:28):
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 can find
us pretty much anywhere on the Internet. We're on Twitter,
where on Instagram? Where 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. You shook,
(53:49):
can I just want to say I was completely unaware
of the story as well, and and and just blown
away by the fact that it was just these regional
I mean l a times obviously a big publication, but
it was all horses 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,
(54:11):
Noel Brown, I am at Ben Boland hs W on Twitter,
I am at Ben Boland on Instagram. Matt is on Instagram,
but he's 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. Uh. If you don't
like social media, we get it. We've got a phone number.
(54:35):
You can call us any time. We are one eight
three three st d w y t K. But hold on,
you might say, what what do I do if I
hate social media? What? What? 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 seven every day of the year, and that
(54:57):
is our email address where we are conspiracy at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know
(55:22):
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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