DOE TO SAMPLE SOILS AT 25 MORE SANTA SUSANA LAB SITES.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

The Department of Energy said Tuesday night that it intends to sample for radioactivity at 25 more former building sites at the Santa Susana Field Lab, which would complete the cleanup of the former nuclear research facility.

The federal agency and the lab owner, the Boeing Co., presented the results of their historical site assessment, which revisits the entire former nuclear research area and considers whether individual areas meet DOE's cleanup standard or whether more radiation surveys are needed.

The full site assessment is expected to be released in late April. It will include short reports on all buildings and facilities that were used in the former Energy Technology Engineering Center.

``The bottom line is, we're making a decision to do additional soil sampling,'' said Mike Lopez, DOE project manager.

But lab watchdogs are skeptical of the report.

``Why should anyone believe a single word of the polluter, who asks himself if he polluted and then answers he didn't?'' said Dan Hirsch, with the Committee to Bridge the Gap.

ETEC is a 90-acre section of the field lab where the government conducted nuclear research from the 1950s to 1988. It was home to 10 nuclear reactors, one of which experienced a partial meltdown, and an open-air burn pit where workers burned radioactive and chemical waste.

The DOE and Boeing have been decontaminating the site, however neighbors and environmental groups have sued, saying the cleanup plan would leave too much radiation at the site. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the DOE plan would leave the site unsafe for even casual picnicking.

As part of the site assessment, the DOE and Boeing looked at 272 former building sites. Some 175 were never used for radiological activity, and were released without further study.

Some 95 sites had radiological activity, of which 70 were studied and released, and 25 more sites require sampling.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com