Rockwell to Close Nuclear ‘Hot Lab’ : Environment: Activists are stunned by the firm’s unexpected decision. The company says the shutdown of the nuclear materials research site will have a negligible effect on its business.

In a move that stunned but delighted its critics, Rockwell International announced plans Friday to close its nuclear “hot lab” at the Santa Susana field laboratory west of Chatsworth, which had become a lightning rod for protests by neighborhood and anti-nuclear activists.

Rockwell, which has been seeking a 10-year extension of a special nuclear materials license to operate the hot lab, said Friday that it will instead request renewal of the license only through next October to complete existing work and file a decontamination plan with the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“That is great! That is the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” said Jim Werner, a project engineer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that had opposed the hot lab’s relicensing request.

“You’re kidding. . . . I think that’s fantastic,” said Jon Scott of Bell Canyon, who had intervened in license hearings before the NRC.

The decision was announced by Rockwell’s Rocketdyne Division in a brief press release, and a company spokesman said officials would make no further comment. The press release said the amount of radioactivity to be handled in the hot lab for the remainder of its life will be less than that found “in a typical neighborhood hospital radiation therapy unit.”

The company said that no job losses are expected and that the effect on its business “will be negligible” because of the small amount of present business for the hot lab.

The sudden announcement appeared to have caught some employees unaware. “I haven’t heard there was a decision to close it,” a Rocketdyne nuclear materials manager replied when asked for a comment.

Rockwell’s prepared statement reiterated the company’s contention--backed by federal Department of Energy and state and federal environmental agencies--that conditions at Santa Susana do not pose an immediate risk to health.

“While the hot lab poses no threat to safety, health or the environment, we hope closure of the facility will allay concerns and will assure the public of our commitment to the community in which we live and work,” Rocketdyne President Bob Paster was quoted as saying.

The hot lab is a heavily shielded workshop where nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials are handled by remote control. The bulk of its work has been decladding--taking apart--nuclear fuel to remove the plutonium and uranium for shipment to DOE sites, but the last decladding work was done in 1986.

The announcement prompted a chorus of cheers from a number of political figures, including Assemblyman Terry Friedman, a Los Angeles Democrat whose district includes portions of the southern San Fernando Valley. Friedman called the announcement good news and “a reminder that an aroused citizenry can have an impact.”

Said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar): “I want to give credit to the neighbors who wouldn’t give up and credit to Rockwell for seeing the handwriting on the wall.”

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who in recent months had blasted such federal agencies as the DOE and Environmental Protection Agency for failing to properly regulate the Santa Susana lab--but had avoided criticism of Rockwell itself--said he had “been working for several weeks to persuade Rocketdyne” to close the hot lab.

“It is becoming more and more obvious that nuclear operations of this type should not be taking place in an area where 500,000 people live within a 10-mile radius,” he said in a prepared statement.

The decision appeared to reflect a calculation that the lab’s limited business did not outweigh a torrent of bad publicity about the nuclear side of Rockwell’s work.

As more citizens groups and “legislators became interested in it, I think the level of scrutiny that they were going to be subjected to wasn’t worth it in terms of the possible economic return they could get at this facility,” said Mary Nichols, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The move also continued Rockwell’s partial disengagement from federal nuclear work that began last month when the DOE and Rockwell announced the firm’s withdrawal as manager of the problem-plagued Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver.

But closure of the hot lab does not necessarily mean that Santa Susana’s nuclear work is at an end. The hot lab is licensed by the NRC because the land and equipment are Rockwell’s property. However, adjacent areas under lease or option to the DOE are not under NRC license. Nuclear work could be done there under provisions of the Atomic Energy Act that allow the DOE to serve as both customer and regulator.

Although radioactive materials are stored in the DOE area in a complex known as the radioactive materials disposal facility, the hot lab is the only place where nuclear work is now done, according to officials with the DOE’s San Francisco operations office.

Future activities in the DOE area “may or may not involve nuclear work,” said Donald Pearman, acting DOE manager in San Francisco.

But Pearman said nuclear activities were less likely after the hot lab, which would be needed for some types of work, is closed.

DOE officials also said the decision will not affect the pace or extent of cleanup work at Santa Susana. Over a seven-year period, the DOE has proposed spending about $45 million to clean up chemical and radioactive contamination in buildings, soil and water in the DOE area of Santa Susana.

Established in the late 1940s, Santa Susana occupies 2,668 acres on a rugged plateau in the Simi Hills southeast of Simi Valley.

Most of the lab is devoted to rocket testing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Air Force. A 290-acre swath of the property has been reserved since the late 1950s for nuclear and other energy work for DOE and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

Largely unknown to the public, the site was once a major West Coast center for nuclear research, with 16 small nuclear reactors operating there from the 1950s to early 1980s. Nuclear fuel fabrication, in addition to decladding, was also done there.

Rockwell had sought renewal of the hot lab’s license in hopes of attracting more decladding business from the DOE. The decladding, done from about 1960 to 1986, involved splitting open the metal rods encasing spent nuclear fuel and extracting plutonium and uranium. The materials were then shipped to DOE nuclear sites to use in manufacturing atomic weapons and fuel for nuclear-powered Navy ships.

Rockwell has been the target of withering accusations and bad publicity since disclosure in May of a DOE report acknowledging that chemical and radioactive contamination exists in the DOE portion of Santa Susana. The pollution has been described as mostly low-level, but the disclosure greatly increased scrutiny of the nuclear site and made many residents more aware of it.