The Energy Department said this week that demolition of 10 buildings is underway at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif.
Teardown of a guard station marks the start of demolition of 10 deteriorating buildings at the Radioactive Materials Handling Facility (RMHF) complex agreed to in May by DOE and the state of California. The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said this is its first physical remediation at the site in more than a decade.
The parties say negotiations continue on taking down the remaining eight buildings at the 2-acre RMHF, which once served DOE’s former Energy Technology Engineering Center at Santa Susana.
Since the 1980s, more than 200 structures on the site have been demolished and removed, an Energy Department spokesperson said in a Thursday email.
In October 2019, DOE released a record of decision formalizing its plan to demolish all 18 buildings. But the California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) officials reminded the federal agency that the state must approve any demolition plans.
The Energy Department will continue to work with California on the steps necessary to remove the remaining DOE buildings at ETEC, and toward remediation of soils and groundwater at the site, the DOE spokesperson said.
The Energy Department once operated 10 small reactors for nuclear energy research on its portion of the sprawling 2,280-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory, located 30 miles from Los Angeles. Starting in 1959, the RMHF complex was used to process, package, and ship radioactive waste until operations ended in 1988.
Most of the remaining buildings were most recently used for waste storage. There are also old packaging and office buildings.
The work started July 21 and should be completed within six months, federal and state officials have said. State and federal officials want to remove the buildings down to slab in order to minimize the risk of contaminants being spread through the air via wildfire, such as the Woolsey Fire in November 2018 that burned 96,000 acres, including parts of the SSFL property.
The work is being done by Idaho-based North Wind Group.
The Energy Department, NASA, and Boeing are the three parties responsible for cleaning up the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
By the end of the year, the California DTSC expects to release both its Program Environmental Impact Report and the Project Management Plan. The PMP will provide a roadmap for completing the cleanup, said state agency spokesman Russ Edmondson in a Thursday email. The PEIR describes potential environmental impacts from the remediation, and identifies actions that DTSC might require DOE, NASA and Boeing to take to avoid or reduce those effects.
