Rockwell Safety Plan Criticized a Second Time : Readiness: A doctors’ group says the company is badly misrepresenting its ability to cope with radiation injuries from a spill at the Santa Susana lab.

For the second time in recent months, critics have accused Rockwell International of giving the government false assurances about local readiness to cope with radiation injuries if there were an accident at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth.

The charge was leveled by Los Angeles Physicians for Social Responsibility, one of several groups fighting Rockwell’s application to extend for one year the special nuclear materials license for Santa Susana’s hot lab.

The Rockwell application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission includes a contingency plan that “contains numerous material false statements” about arrangements between Rockwell and local hospitals to treat radiation accident victims, according to a brief the physicians group filed with the NRC.

It is the second time the accuracy of Rockwell’s contingency plan has been an issue in the case. Previously, discrepancies were found in claims about arrangements for ambulance services, although Rockwell described these as “minor errors.”

In the most recent case, the physicians group said, an investigation by four of its members found that the contingency plan “badly misrepresents the arrangements--or lack of arrangements--made for medical assistance.”

Paul Sewell, a spokesman for Rockwell’s Rocketdyne division, which operates the Santa Susana lab in the Simi Hills, declined to comment Monday, citing the company’s policy of responding first to the NRC judge presiding in the case. Sewell said Rockwell will reply “to those specific items” when it files its brief in the case next month.

The physicians group cited an assertion in the contingency plan that both the medical director and director of nursing at nearby Humana Hospital-West Hills were trained in treatment of radioactively contaminated patients at the government’s nuclear reservation at Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The physicians group said that the medical director who received the training is now based at another Humana hospital in Northern California. That was confirmed by a hospital official.

“One must question the adequacy of those arrangements if Rockwell is apparently unaware that the medical director whom they had arranged to have trained in handling radioactively contaminated patients is no longer at the hospital,” the brief said.

Five other hospitals listed in the Rockwell plan as “capable of radiation accident management” were found by the group to lack special equipment and training, according to the brief.

“In summary, of the six hospitals identified . . . as having the training and equipment to handle radioactively contaminated patients, none were accurately described by Rockwell. . . . There is only one hospital, not six as claimed by Rockwell, capable of handling contaminated patients, and it has only one trained staff person, not two as claimed,” said the brief dated Feb. 19.

The hot lab is a heavily shielded workshop used to handle highly radioactive materials by remote control. After originally seeking a 10-year renewal of the hot lab’s license, Rockwell announced last fall it would settle for a one-year extension to complete one more nuclear experiment before cleaning up and closing the hot lab.

But opponents are trying to block this project and get Rockwell to put in writing its statement that it will halt nuclear activities permanently.

The allegations by the physicians group revive the controversy that surfaced last fall over arrangements for fire and ambulance services. Don Wallace, a Los Angeles fire captain and head of the anti-nuclear Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition, said last September he had checked statements in the plan about ambulance services and found them “rife with false assurances.”

The NRC later said that some arrangements cited by Rockwell “were apparently those that existed” in a prior version of the plan and had not been updated.

In December, Rockwell released a revised contingency plan to correct the errors, saying they were minor. It is that updated plan, however, the physicians group now contends is inaccurate.

In another development in the case, Rockwell has asked NRC Law Judge Peter B. Bloch to strike major parts of the opponents’ case as “irrelevant and immaterial” to the licensing issues.

The Rockwell motion, dated March 1, is directed at the lengthy briefs in which six groups and individuals last month explained their opposition to the license request.

Rockwell asked Bloch to rule inadmissible the entire briefs of the Southern California Federation of Scientists, the Susana Knolls Homeowners Assn. and intervenors Estelle Lit and Jerome E. Raskin.

The company also sought to strike parts of the briefs of Jon Scott and Physicians for Social Responsibility--although not its discussion of alleged inaccuracies in the contingency plan. The company did not ask to strike any of the brief of the anti-nuclear Committee to Bridge the Gap.

Rockwell also asked Bloch to formally dismiss two other intervenors--Don Wallace and the Natural Resources Defense Council--who said they were dropping out of the case because the other groups represented their interests.

The intervenors have 10 days to reply before Bloch rules on the motion.

Rockwell said some arguments should be stricken as irrelevant, and that others were inadmissible because opponents failed to identify specific NRC regulations or deficiencies in the application.

Other issues raised several times in different briefs should be stricken to avoid redundancy, Rockwell maintained.