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He remembered his boss getting right in his face and saying, "You will not say a word. "They had to let it out over their own families."Īrea Four workers "were sworn to secrecy that they would not tell anyone what they had done," Pace explained. "They felt terrible that it had to be done," he said. Pace said he and his co-workers knew they were venting dangerous radiation over populated areas, but they were following orders. "It was getting out towards the public," he said. So for weeks, often in the dark of night, Pace and other workers were ordered to open the large door in the reactor building and vent the radiation into the air. Instead, he said they realized, their efforts were only generating more radioactive gas. Pace and his co-workers frantically tried to repair the damaged reactor. "It went straight out into the atmosphere and went straight to Simi Valley, to Chatsworth, to Canoga Park." "This was very dangerous radioactive material," he said. To prevent a potentially devastating explosion, one that in hindsight the 76-year-old Pace believes would have been "just like Chernobyl," he and other workers were instructed to open the exhaust stacks and release massive amounts of radiation into the sky. "The radiation in that building got so high, it went clear off the scale," he said. In fact, Pace said, the meltdown was verging on a major radioactive explosion. "Nobody knows the truth of what actually happened," Pace told the I-Team. Now, whistleblowers interviewed on camera by NBC4 have recounted how during and after that accident they were ordered to release dangerous radioactive gases into the air above Los Angeles and Ventura counties, often under cover of night, and how their bosses swore them to secrecy.Īttorney: LAPD Statements in Officer's Death Inconsistent But the federal government still hasn't told the public that radiation was released into the atmosphere as a result of the partial nuclear meltdown. In 1959, Area Four was the site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. Founded in 1947 to test experimental nuclear reactors and rocket systems, the research facility was built in the hills above the two valleys. Those are the findings of a yearlong NBC4 I-Team investigation into "Area Four," which is part of the once-secret Santa Susana Field Lab. LA's Nuclear Secret: Timelines, Documents, FAQ government secretly allowed radiation from a damaged reactor to be released into air over the San Fernando and Simi valleys in the wake of a major nuclear meltdown in Southern California more than 50 years ago - fallout that nearby residents contend continues to cause serious health consequences and, in some cases, death.