At The LA Daily News an article about the Woolsey Fire in Ventura county focuses on the Rocketdyne Facility, or the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
The Woolsey Fire, an out-of-control wildfire that started in Ventura County and moved into Malibu, where it is consuming homes along the coastal community, began as a brush fire near the site of a partial nuclear meltdown at a laboratory in Simi Valley, officials said Friday.
This has raised concerns for some watchdog groups, neighbors and others who have called for a total cleanup of the site known as the Rocketdyne facility for many years. They worry the fire caused the spread of toxins into the air.
However, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control in Sacramento denied that the fire that burned through a portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory presented additional public health threats.
Addionally, Wikipedia has a good history of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Add another “event” to the nuclear industry’s scorecard.
Throughout the years, approximately ten low-power nuclear reactors operated at SSFL, in addition to several “critical facilities”: a sodium burn pit in which sodium-coated objects were burned in an open pit; a plutonium fuel fabrication facility; a uranium carbide fuel fabrication facility; and the purportedly largest “Hot Lab” facility in the United States at the time.[20] (A Hot Lab is a facility used for remotely cutting up irradiated nuclear fuel.) Irradiated nuclear fuel from other Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and Department of Energy (DOE) facilities from around the country were shipped to SSFL to be decladded and examined.
The Hot Lab suffered a number of fires involving radioactive materials. For example, in 1957, a fire in the Hot Cell “got out of control and … massive contamination” resulted.[21]
At least four of the ten nuclear reactors suffered accidents: 1) The AE6 reactor experienced a release of fission gases in March 1959.[22] 2) In July 1959, the SRE experienced a power excursion and partial meltdown that released 28 Curies of radioactive noble gasses. The release resulted on the maximum off site exposure of 0.099 millirem and an exposure of 0.018 millirem for the nearest residential building which is well within current limits today.[23] 3) In 1964, the SNAP8ER experienced damage to 80% of its fuel. 4) Finally, in 1969 the SNAP8DR experienced similar damage to one-third of its fuel.[22]
A radioactive fire occurred in 1971, involving combustible primary reactor coolant (NaK) contaminated with mixed fission products.[24][25]
The reactors located on the grounds of SSFL were considered experimental, and therefore had no containment structures. Reactors and highly radioactive components were housed without the large concrete domes that surround modern power reactors.
All this about 30 miles from LA.