Boeing’s Demolition of a California Nuclear Testing Facility Has Nearby Families Worried About Cancer

Boeing has almost completed the demolition of five buildings at its infamous Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Southern California, even as concerns mount among nearby families about potential health harms.

The buildings at the former Rocketdyne facility—where one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in U.S. history took place in 1959—were once used for Cold War-era nuclear energy research.

Larry Yee, the former chair of the LA Regional Water Quality Control Board, on Wednesday called the site “a mini Chernobyl in our backyard.”

Despite a groundswell of concerns about the process, the SSFL demolition at the lab between Simi Valley and Los Angeles began in late September. Four of the five buildings slated for demolition, all of which have sat unused for over 15 years, according to Boeing, have been brought down so far. The fifth demolition, at a site where more than 50 structures once stood, is slated to be completed this year.

Among the already leveled structures is “Building 55,” known in its heyday as the Nuclear Materials Development Facility, which for decades was a storage, handling and processing facility for “unspent fuel rods,” explained local historian William Preston Bowling.

“So they took fuel rods from all reactors from across the nation and took them to the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory and had them de-cladded and repurposed and shipped off for disposal at other sites,” Bowling said.

California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control told community members that the state Department of Public Health and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission previously determined that remaining structures at the site are below or near background levels of radiation—what would occur naturally—and “pose no elevated risk to the public.”

Opponents of the current work dispute that finding.

“We don’t agree on the premise that these buildings were across the board uncontaminated,” said Jeni Knack, co-director of the grassroots organization Parents Against SSFL. 

Instead, Knack told Inside Climate News, the DTSC has “accepted Boeing’s claim” that the site was safe to demolish.

In 2023, the California Court of Appeal ruled in Boeing’s favor on litigation brought by the nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility over the responsibility for oversight of the SSFL cleanup, determining that the demolition did not have to be approved by the state and is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Elizabeth Leslie-Gassaway, a DTSC spokesperson, did not immediately clarify what, if any, additional radiation readings were taken prior to the recent demolitions. 

DTSC deferred questions related to dust control and air monitoring to Ventura County, which permitted the work. But according to Knack, when Parents Against SSFL approached Ventura County about oversight of the demolition, the group was directed to the DTSC.

During an inspection on Sept. 28, “DTSC observed Boeing conducting dust control mitigation and confirmed that demolition activities are not disturbing slabs or surrounding soil,” a DTSC official wrote Tuesday in a letter to Parents Against SSFL.

However, advocates argue that given the site’s well documented history of processing and storing of plutonium-239, which can cause cancer if inhaled or ingested, further protections for the nearby community—including the more than 120,000 people in Simi Valley—are critical. Group leaders have shared documents outlining the site’s history with state regulators.

“Is there contamination in these buildings? Almost certainly,” Michael Ketterer, a part-time faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University, told Inside Climate News after reviewing documents outlining the SSFL site and residents’ concerns. 

“Does it cause an egregious situation on the local community? I don’t know,” Ketterer said. Not enough information on the radiation readings was available to determine the risks to people, he said. 

Still, Yee, the former LA Water Quality Control Board chair, and others who have followed developments at SSFL for years, are worried the demolition puts people in the area at risk.  

The Ventura County Air Pollution Control District does not require specific dust control measures, district spokesperson Karin Grennan told Inside Climate News. 

She deferred questions about monitoring for radiation and broader environmental effects to the DTSC and other agencies. The DTSC did not provide additional comments this week.

“Facilities must take measures sufficient to comply with Rule 55 requirements, which restrict visible dust emissions beyond the property line,” Grennan said. “But facilities can select the specific dust control measures they implement.”

Ventura County said it has received complaints about potential dust-related issues but it has not been notified of emerging or ongoing health impacts as a result of the demolition.

Boeing declined to provide the cost of the demolition or specifics on the dust-mitigation or monitoring steps the company has taken, outside of noting that it would follow the law.

“As we have done and as work continues,” Joshua Barrett, a Boeing spokesperson, said, “we will follow the sitewide Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, apply water for dust suppression, restrict access to authorized personnel and transport debris to an authorized offsite disposal facility.”

“Removal of these buildings is a key step toward the site’s ultimate open space use,” Barrett said.

The site is eventually slated to become a public recreation area, despite fierce opposition from groups like Parents Against SSFL and the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit focused on nuclear policy.

Is it Safe?

Nuclear research ended at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in 1988 and rocket testing stopped in 2006. 

The now-defunct 2,800-acre federal research complex, where engines were once tested for the country’s space exploration program, was previously occupied by NASA, the Department of Energy and Boeing. It has been solely owned by Boeing since 1996. 

Boeing and California regulators have drawn criticism over how they have managed SSFL and the risks posed by on-site contamination in the past. How the demolition is being carried out is the latest in a string of developments that have alarmed residents.

Local groups pushing for a full cleanup of the site to pre-contamination conditions point to a 2013 report by Committee to Bridge the Gap as evidence of the need for more oversight. 

Boeing, state and federal regulators have relied on the original decommissioning  studies of the SSFL buildings currently being demolished, which were conducted by Tetra Tech and other Rocketdyne and EPA contractors in the 1980’s. In a critique of the study, Daniel Hirsch, a founder of the Committee to Bridge the Gap and the former director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, found they used “poor” testing methods and equipment that would be considered outdated by modern standards, and relied on regulations today deemed “obsolete,” the group said. 

The committee said in its 2013 report that the original studies showed several buildings still had radiation readings above background levels, residents rallying against the demolition said. That included 88 higher-than-background readings at Building 55, the plutonium fuel facility.

Families have grown increasingly worried that the demolition continued despite the Santa Ana winds during the last two weeks. 

“The winds just exacerbate the situation,” said Dr. Robert Dodge, a retired family physician and a board member for the Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles. “We had red flag warning wind alerts across the entire basin for increased fire danger,” said Dodge. “But of course, with their infinite wisdom, they decided it was a great day to continue demolitions.”

In an Oct. 20 letter to Parents Against SSFL, the DTSC said in preparation for the winds, Boeing placed debris in secured bins for transportation.

Residents have also raised concerns over where debris from the demolition is being taken for disposal. As buildings are taken down, the DTSC said debris is being transported off site to Clean Harbors Buttonwillow, a Class I disposal facility as required by regulations. But critics of the work note that the facility is meant to handle hazardous waste, not radioactive materials.

Leslie-Gassaway, the spokesperson for the DTSC, said both the California Department of Public Health and the EPA reviewed previously-completed studies of the site in 2013 and deemed the buildings safe to demolish without stricter radiation-related oversight. 

Boeing officials said the company prepared the buildings for demolition with steps like removing and disposing of asbestos. 

Still, locals in the area warn that dust laced with carcinogenic plutonium-239 threatens nearby residents. 

“Boeing should prove to us that plutonium-239 won’t get into our water or air during the demolition and disposal,” Melissa Bumstead, founder and co-director of Parents Against SSFL, said in a statement prior to learning the demolition was already underway. She said nearby families were not properly notified when the work was starting.

Bumstead’s daughter has survived two bouts of a rare form of leukemia, which the family believes is linked to radiation from SSFL—a story told in a 2021 documentary about the site.

As the demolition continues and debris is removed, some of which Bumstead has photographed leaving SSFL in partially uncovered trucks, her list of worries keeps growing.

“Just because what Boeing is doing is legal doesn’t mean it’s safe,” Bumstead said.