Air Dyne

What have been the after-effects of the 1959 RocketDyne nuclear accident?

Similar to the cluster effect in Massachusetts's and the Chernobyl incident, have there been any studies done on the Southern California region to see how much radiation still remains...in the water, air, ground, etc., and to see how this leaked radiation has affected the people surrounding following the 1959 Rocket-Dyne SRE accident?

There were no after-effects, certainly not on the order of the Chernobyl accident. This was a very small reactor, and the contamination was mostly to the sodium coolant and a little into the building. Note that the sodium design allows for minimal pressure as compared with the high pressures in commercial nuclear generating plants.

It is easy enough to hire "experts" to claim that a facility caused cancer, which is why everyone who got cancer much later claimed it was caused by the plant. However, if the plant did not release enough radiation to kill anyone at the time, then these later effects are not credible. They rebuilt and refueled this little reactor without much trouble.

The SRE accident occurred in July 1959 when there was an accidental blockage of sodium coolant in some of the reactor coolant channels. This resulted in the partial cladding melting of 13 of the 43 reactor fuel assemblies and the release of some fission products that contaminated the primary reactor cooling system and some of the inside rooms of the facility.

Reactor safety systems functioned properly, and the reactor was safely shut down. The primary pressure vessel, containing the reactor core and sodium coolant, remained intact. Under the oversight of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), contamination within the building was cleaned up, and the damaged reactor fuel assemblies removed. A second fuel loading was inserted, and operations continued in September 1960 until the reactor was shut down in February 1964 due to termination of the project.

A major portion of the radioactivity released from the fuel as a result of the cladding melting was contained in the sodium coolant, but some of the radioactive gases were collected in a hold-up tank. Over a period of two months these gases were vented to the atmosphere with the approval and oversight of the AEC. The releases were well below those permitted by regulations in existence in 1959 and also today.