Santa Susana Field Laboratory

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory ( SSFL ) is a once very important test center for missile and nuclear technology in the United States. It is located about 48 km north from the center of Los Angeles, in Simi Valley in the Simi Hills at the southern foot of the Santa Susana Mountains.

Among others, the SSFL the Saturn rockets built for the Apollo missions ( Rocketdyne ), it became the first civilian economic nuclear reactor designed ( the Sodium Reactor Experiment, with the nearby town of Moorpark was supplied ) and it was under the SDI program experiments carried out.

Today, the SSFL is operated as a private research facility of the Boeing Company.

Accidents

July 26, 1959 - In a nuclear reactor, a fast breeder reactor with 7.5 MW, due to a blocked cooling channel a 30 percent meltdown occurred. The bulk of the cleavage products was filtered off. The radioactive gases, however, were largely released to the environment, which resulted in one of the largest iodine -131 releases in nuclear history. The accident was kept secret for a long time. (INES: 5-6 )