Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment

by Joseph Mangano

  Finally, in February 1993, it allocated nearly $1 million to study worker health, and formed a team from UCLA to conduct a study. The team was guided by a fourteen-member Oversight Panel, co-chaired by Hirsch and David Michaels of the City of New York Medical School. It included some distinguished academic researchers, including Dr. Alice Stewart, author of the pioneering studies of cancer risk from low dose radiation in the 1950s, linking abdominal X-rays to pregnant women with cancer risk to the child. The only DOE employee on the panel was purposely classified as a non-voting member.

  Three years later, the UCLA team had finished a rough draft of its study. Findings were distributed for comment – including to Rocketdyne officials, even though the company had a public relations and financial interest in its outcome. Eventually, the study was released by the Oversight Panel, which stated that 27% of cancer deaths among workers were attributable to workplace exposures. It also found:

  – Higher death rates of blood, lymph system, and lung cancer from external exposures (using badge readings).

  – Progressively higher death rates of all cancers and those sensitive to radiation, with progressively higher external doses (using badge readings).

  – Higher death rates of digestive, oral, pharynx, esophagus, and stomach cancer from internal exposures (breathing, eating, drinking).

  – Higher death rates for cancer in workers exposed after age forty-nine.

  The panel made the important point that worker exposures did not violate legal limits, yet still caused a considerable number of excess cancer cases, suggesting limits were not protecting workers:

  Although the cancer deaths at SSFL attributable to radiation exposure were dose-related, they occurred at doses substantially below those considered permissible by official US and international regulatory bodies, thus raising questions about the adequacy of current regulations.

  The report concluded that health of the Santa Susana workers should continue to be monitored in the future, and that a study of cancer risk to the entire community, not just workers, was warranted. The UCLA researchers published study results in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 1999.

  Progress towards studying health of all residents living in the community near Santa Susana, not just plant workers, lagged behind. Pressure from local residents to conduct these studies grew, causing elected officials including US Senator Dianne Feinstein to become involved. In 1999, Feinstein wrote three letters to Donna Shalala, President Clinton’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, to appropriate funds to examine the feasibility of such a study. More pressure was applied by activists, who in 1998 forced the release of a state Department of Health Services study on lung cancer rates in Southern California. The study, which had been completed two years before but not released, showed elevated rates in Ventura County tracts closest to Santa Susana.

  Finally, the federal government relented and sent out staff from its Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to Southern California. The staff conducted a one-day hearing, which failed to appease activists. Recollections of the day’s proceedings included a statement by an ATSDR radiation specialist, who claimedthat “eating a banana provided more radiation than living below the facility.”

  A study of cancer risk among members of the community closest to Santa Susana had never been conducted, mostly because of DOE’s refusal to open its pocketbook to provide the substantial resources needed for such a study. But in the early 2000s, a breakthrough was made. The department settled a law suit by pledging several million dollars to a fund (independent of DOE) that supported and administered grants subsidizing health studies at DOE nuclear facilities. The Santa Susana Oversight Panel, which had finished its worker studies, successfully applied for and received a grant from this fund, and coupled with subsidies from the state of California, finally began to consider the health effects to the community from the July 1959 accident.

  The panel received no help from Rocketdyne when it asked for data:

  We discovered that Atomics International had a meteorological station on top of the SRE at the time of the accident. We requested that Rocketdyne provide us with the weather data. Rocketdyne declined, asserting that the information was proprietary – a trade secret. Which way the wind was blowing nearly fifty years ago obviously is not a business secret… withholding of weather data suggests the possibility that Rocketdyne has something to hide regarding the implications for environmental releases and exposure of off-site populations.

  The panel produced a report in October 2006, accompanied by more detailed reports from consultants. One was from nuclear engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who estimated that the accident released 6,500 and 1,300 curies of iodine-131 and cesium-137 into the air, compared to seventeen and zero from the Three Mile Island accident. Lochbaum’s numbers provide the basis for the estimate that Santa Susana releases were about 458 times greater than Three Mile Island, even exceeding Arjun Makhijani’s prior estimate of 260 times. Physicist Jan Beyea also prepared a long report, estimating doses to humans and their health effects. Beyea concluded that the 1959 accident caused between zero and 1800 cancers to local residents, with an average of 260 excess cancer cases.

  For the first time, experts had attributed cancer risk to the 1959 accident. But the report fell short in some ways. The panel itself noted that epidemiological studies such as the one it did had a limited ability to identify excess cancers. Moreover, citizens were not totally satisfied. The idea that fewer than 300 people developed cancer, in the largest county in the US (Los Angeles, with a population of over ten million, of whom four million will develop cancer in their lifetime) suggests that the accident caused only minimal harm.

  The four women who formed the Rocketdyne Cleanup Commission may be among those who think Beyea may have badly underestimated casualties. In 2006, they published a long memoir of their experience over nearly two decades called Loss of Innocence. (Perhaps not coincidentally, three of the four are now cancer survivors, and the other has experienced problems with her thyroid gland.) The memoir, published the same month that the excess cancer estimate was made public by the Panel, stated that limited health studies to date “reinforce the fact that our original goal of a community epidemiological study is still needed.” Much like the effort to understand contamination patterns at Santa Susana, much more work is needed to satisfactorily calculate health hazards to local residents.

  The story of Santa Susana is still, as of mid-2012, very much a work in progress. Full understanding of the extent of contamination at the site, along with the extent of health consequences to workers and local residents, will not be known for at least the foreseeable future.

  Particularly since 1989, there have been extensive efforts to unlock the secrets of the vast and mysterious site in the Simi Valley. But even these efforts have left many stones unturned. A substantial part of the reason that more is not currently known is resistance, mostly by government and industry officials. This resistance has taken many forms, including public denials of wrongdoing, refusal to participate in effective remediation programs, refusal to fund needed health studies, lack of cooperation in sharing data, and even legal actions (as plaintiffs and defendants). Resistance continues today, even though it is weakening somewhat with the passing of time.

  There are reasons supporting the belief that resistance will continue to fade in the future. One is that Santa Susana is no longer used for any research purpose; the nuclear program was halted in 1980, and the rocket program finally ceased in 2006. (Of course, the post-nuclear era at Santa Susana was not free of risk; a 1994 explosion that killed two Rocketdyne workers ended up in a lawsuit that Boeing settled a decade later.) Another is that the Cold War ethos that anything done in the name of national security is acceptable is, at long last, fading from the scene. This belief has been replaced, in the Simi Valley and across the nation, by a hard truth that considerable and avoidable damage was done during the nuclear program, damage that still has
n’t been fully accounted for.

  Regarding Santa Susana, this message has been reinforced repeatedly, primarily by citizens seeking the truth, and backed by media and public officials. The History Channel aired a program in 2006 on the large 1959 Sodium Reactor Experiment accident. John Pace, the young man who worked at the site during the accident, was astonished to view himself in the old footage, and reports of workers that became ill from the accident moved him to begin telling his story about what had happened. The fiftieth anniversary of the meltdown in July 1959 brought considerable media attention. Even more recently, the CBS-TV affiliate in Los Angeles produced a news broadcast about the site and the four women who led the Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition, on February 3, 2011.

  The primary legacy of Santa Susana’s atomic experience is that it attempted to develop a technology that wound up adding little to the US nuclear power program. Sodium-cooled reactors are non-existent in the US and virtually non-existent worldwide. DOE plants are still in operation, but their primary purpose is cleanup. With the last order for a new US nuclear power reactor having occurred in 1978, the need to develop new technology in this area is greatly reduced. Contamination at DOE plants like Santa Susana still exists in large quantities, and it will take years to restore the sites to their previously untainted states.

  A secondary legacy of the Atomics International experience relates to operating a nuclear plant near a major metropolitan center. The ten most populated cities in the US are each in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant (below). But none are located as close as Santa Susana to downtown Los Angeles, which is just twenty-nine miles away.

  Sources: US Census Bureau (population), US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (location). Distance represents approximately the center of each city to the border of the nuclear plant.

  In the past, some proposals to build reactors even closer to big cities (or actually within cities, as in the case of New York) have been turned down. None of the thirty-three new nuclear reactors across the US that have been proposed over the past decade are slated near major cities. The experience of a meltdown occurring less than thirty miles from a county that now has 10 million people has yielded a lesson of “don’t come too close.”

  Some may believe that the legacy of Santa Susana is still unfolding, and that the future will utilize the knowledge acquired from nuclear research at the plant. Since about the time the new millennium began, there has been talk of a “nuclear revival” featuring more reactors and techniques like reprocessing (which requires sodium cooling). But this talk has been nothing more – only talk – without accompanying actions. The historical record of plants like Santa Susana continues to unfold, perhaps affecting long-term public policies related to nuclear power.

  Secrecy Cracks Reveal Carnage

  By 1970, nineteen nuclear power reactors had begun operations in the US. In addition, utilities had officially placed orders for ninety-one more reactors to the Atomic Energy Commission. Many more would be announced in the next few years. In 1973, the Arab oil embargo and resulting energy crisis gave nuclear backers another basis for expansion: energy independence. Late that year, President Richard Nixon announced “Project Independence” which (among other things) called for 1,000 reactors to operate across the country by the year 2000. The AEC topped Nixon’s prediction the following year with a figure of 1,200. Research was in full force to develop various models for reactors.

  The early nuclear reactors were a sort of pilot test. Nobody knew just how these new machines would function on a daily basis, as the research documented problems along with promise. The early reactors encountered a number of mechanical problems that hadn’t been anticipated. Many were forced to shut down for extended periods for repairs, and a few even shut down permanently after just a few years in operation. But the utilities in charge just went about their business, and the rosy image of nuclear power among the vast majority of Americans continued unabated.

  Why were utilities given carte blanche in these early years? First, the nuclear weapons plants culture was carried over to nuclear power plants. Bomb factories operated in virtual secrecy, and were permitted by government officials, media, and the public to do so, in order to maintain national security. By virtue of the “nuclear” in their description, nuclear plants were allowed to work without much accountability.

  A second reason for the great freedom enjoyed by utilities was the strong positive public image generated by industry and government through extensive advertising campaigns, and other direct and indirect propaganda.

  Third, the assumption that utilities were safely operating nuclear reactors was an outgrowth of the strong support by many Americans for this goal. The psychological term “cognitive dissonance” can be applied here. This phenomenon occurs when humans are disturbed by conflicting ideas (e.g., the atom is both destructive and peaceful) and reduce this dissonance by believing only what they want to believe. The need for people to believe that the atom was not just a weapon of mass destruction was so strong that it was overpowered by the image of a peaceful atom, and filtered out facts that suggested other potential concerns.

  Fourth, industry and government had a vise-like grip on information relating to reactor safety. Government regulations in the early days of power reactors were quite loose, and operators pretty much could do what they wanted, and tell regulators what they wanted. Often, problems went unreported. Even when utilities aired “dirty laundry” to regulators, these officials would react in a cooperative, non-punitive manner, as the AEC and state radiation boards were equally determined that reactors succeed at all costs. All believed in telling elected officials, media, and the public at large only the rose-colored-glasses version of reactor performance.

  Fifth, there was little to no effort made by elected officials, reporters, and public citizens to question the party line about reactors. Part of the reason for this was the long standing American cultural practice of believing in the integrity of officials and institutions. Questions were simply not asked. Much has been written about how the 1960s marked a turning point from this culture, to one in which skepticism became more prevalent and greater public accountability was demanded, by politicians, media, and citizen groups. This change did not occur until the nuclear power industry had operated for well over a decade.

  Sixth, fears held by nuclear workers and other professionals of repercussions of “whistleblowing” about risks of nuclear reactors were strong. No protections were in place; a nuclear plant worker who brought up a safety issue to his superiors risked losing his job, and risked never working in the field ever again. An extreme example was the 1974 death of Karen Silkwood, who worked in an Oklahoma factory making plutonium pellets for nuclear fuel rods. After determining she had been exposed to high levels of plutonium, Silkwood was found dead in her car just off the road she was traveling on to meet with a reporter from the New York Times and union officials. While the Kerr-McGee company later settled a legal action for $1.38 million while admitting no guilt, to this day some believe Silkwood was run off the road and killed by those fearful of the admissions she was about to make.

  Regulators as well were in a tight spot, as the goals of not standing in the way of nuclear development, of not frightening the public about reactors, and of not darkening the sunny image of the industry, were paramount. Finally, health researchers, many dependent on government grants to support their research, also had to keep a lid on their concerns, out of fear of backlash, which people like Alice Stewart and Thomas Mancuso experienced. There were undoubtedly concerns among at least some nuclear engineering and public health experts, but political issues took precedence over safety concerns.

  For these reasons, virtually no information on unsafe and unhealthy practices at nuclear power plants was known for many years.

  The questioning of the image of “clean” nuclear power reactors evolved gradually. Among the general public, many Americans couldn’t completely shake the realization that in reactors the exact same chemicals were pro
duced as in the atomic bombs that threatened life on Earth. There were also early contentions from professionals that exposure to relatively low doses of fallout from atom bomb tests were hazardous.

  The first eminent scientists to question government claims that bomb fallout was risk free were Linus Pauling of the US and Andrei Sakharov of the Soviet Union. Writing in a 1958 edition of the Soviet journal Atomic Energy, Sakharov calculated that there would be 10,000 human victims for every megaton (one million tons) of nuclear explosions. Because atomic blasts from 1945–1963 equaled 600 megatons worldwide, Sakharov’s prediction would translate into six million victims. He explained in the article: that “halting the tests will directly save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.” Pauling had presented a petition to the United Nations early in 1958, signed by 9,235 scientists including thirty-seven Nobel Prize winners, urging a halt to all atomic bomb tests.

  The deceptive and secretive assertions from officials that bomb fallout was harmless fell apart, especially as aboveground tests were banned. In July 1963, President John F. Kennedy cited health hazards, especially to infants and children, as one reason to enact the Partial Test Ban Treaty:

  Even then, the number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some…. But this is not a natural health hazard – and it is not a statistical issue. The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby – who may be born long after we are gone – should be of concern to us all.