The Ventura County Air Pollution Control District is investigating whether dust left the infected site at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory due to the recent demolition of two buildings through the U. S. Department of Energy. USA
The district is investigating whether the Department of Energy used the effective maximum dust measure when it destroyed buildings with explosives on Oct. 1 at the site of the box lab outside the Simi Valley gates.
The branch “pre-wets” buildings and their grounds before demolition rather than using water cannons to soak structures and soil, according to authorities.
Laki Tisopulos, general manager of the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, said Monday that he believes water cannons are more effective at controlling dust than pre-wet.
According to video footage of the detonations posted online through the Department of Energy, “this led us to the extent that dust attenuation could have been treated much better,” he said. “A cloud of dust emerges as soon as the demolition takes place. “
The photographs “clearly show that whatever mitigation measures were used, they were not very effective,” Tisopulos said. “With a detonation, a dust cloud is almost inevitable, but in this case it raises the question of whether more has been done to keep the dust cloud at a smaller size. “
Embedded content: https://www. etec. energy. gov/library/video/SPFT-video1-sm. mp4
Tisopulos said his agency’s investigation was looking into whether the dust had moved away from the box lab’s barriers.
“You have to make sure you keep the dust in the asset line,” he said.
The Department of Energy may incur a monetary penalty if the investigation determines that it does not comply with district regulations and regulations, Tisopulos said.
“The moment it is discovered that you are not complying with the regulations that apply to them, then you are in violation and can simply pay us a price ticket, a monetary fine,” he said. “And the monetary fine is based on the severity of the infraction. “
The Energy Decomposer said in a statement that the demolition of the two Cold War buildings was carried out safely, which were located in the decomposer’s former power generation engineering center, a component of the box laboratory site, which included the former decomposer sodium pump verification facility.
Both buildings “were non-radiological services that had been tested for radiological and hazardous components,” the branch said in an additional statement.
The branch said that “all the demolitions of the following . . . popular operating procedures, demolition plans and protection procedures. “
The demolition of the buildings “is another vital step in the department’s cleanup activities at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory,” he said.
The two buildings were the last of 18 buildings owned by the Department of Energy and demolished at the Department of Energy Technology Engineering Center. The buildings were destroyed between July 2020 and October 1.
Beginning in the 1960s, the center served as a premier center of study for the United States during the Cold War.
The 2,850-acre Santa Susana site experienced partial nuclear meltdown in 1959, when a rocket engine and rocketdyne/Atomics International nuclear facility were installed. It has also experienced other chemical and radioactive contaminations over the years.
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The box lab site is now largely owned by aerospace giant Boeing, which, along with the Department of Energy and NASA, is guilty of cleaning up its parts of the site as well as buffer zones. not the Department of Energy.
Under a legally binding agreement, the cleanup of soil and groundwater at the site will be completed by the end of 2017, but it has not yet begun.
Tisopulos said his department’s investigation began a few weeks ago after some board members became aware of the dust problem.
Cleanup activists said they had asked the air pollutants district to investigate the matter, but Tisopulos said he wasn’t sure if the request was what caught the attention of board members.
Activists allege that the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, which oversees the long-planned cleanup, allowed the Department of Energy to “energize” the two buildings without adequate dust to prevent the spread of pollution.
“This is an explosive mistake in the DTSC component of its failed surveillance in places like Santa Susana,” Jeff Ruch, director of nonprofit public workers for Pacific Environmental Responsibility, said in a news release.
The Energy Department denied that dynamite was used to demolish the two buildings, but instead hollow tariffs were used, explosives that concentrate force in a specific direction, the branch said.
“The DOE intentionally used hollow fees for the demolition, rather than dynamite, which would have been a much more explosive event,” the branch said.
Activists said the two buildings had been classified through the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency as Class 1, “because of the higher likelihood of radiological contamination,” he said.
Tisopulos, however, said the buildings had been decontaminated before being demolished.
The detonations “produced columns of dust out of control, despite the need to deploy water cannons to create a curtain to accumulate dust,” the activists said.
DTSC spokesman Sanford Nax said last week that “based on the data we have at the moment . . . we do not believe there have been violations of popular operating procedures. “
The only exception is that any of the buildings were pre-moised rather than soaked with water cannons, Nax said.
But “experts decided that soil pre-wetting and design was as effective as water cannons at controlling dust,” he said. The Department of Energy agreed, using precisely the same language.
The Energy Department said the fear about “the widespread use of Array water cannons . . . (it was) also water runoff. “
Nax said that “to verify that the demolition was carried out safely, the DTSC requested the Department of Energy to provide demolition-specific and site-scale air tracking knowledge so that we can assess the dispersion of demolition dust. “
Ruch noted in an interview that an examination published in October found that radioactive contamination migrated from the site of the box lab, the Woolsey 2018 chimney in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks.
The contamination was also discovered in Agoura Hills and West Hills in Los Angeles County, said Marco Kaltofen, of the physics branch of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, who helped conduct the study.
The examination contradicts a report through the DTSC, which concluded that the devastating fire, which broke out on November 8, 2018 at the site of the box’s laboratory, did not cause the release of contaminants in nearby areas, the report published in January.
The chimney burned about 97,000 acres, adding 80% of the box lab site, killing another 3 people, and destroying more than 1,600 homes and other structures in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
It contained November 18, 2018.
Melissa Bumstead, who founded another cleanup group, Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab, said Monday she was furious that the two buildings were demolished with explosives at the infected site without proper dust control.
“It’s reckless and stupid,” he said. And also, it’s the season of places for chimneys, and it’s on the same site that Woolsey’s fireplace place started.
“The release of pollution is our biggest fear,” he said. “And obviously, no approach has been used to protect the network and feel safe. “
Bumstead appears in a new documentary about the box lab, “In the Dark of the Valley,” which will be available for streaming applications.
Harris covers the county cities of Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, as well as county transportation. He can be reached at mike. harris@vcstar. com or at 805-437-0323.
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