Santa Susana Field Laboratory

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) is a once prolific rocket and nuclear reactor test facility located 30 miles (48 km) north of downtown Los Angeles, California. SSFL continues to operate today, serving as a research facility for The Boeing Company. The first commercial nuclear-power producing reactor (the Sodium Reactor Experiment) inside the United States was built at SSFL. The SRE came online in April of 1957, and began feeding electricity to the grid on July 12, 1957. The reactor powered over 1,100 homes in the Moorpark area of California for a short period of time. SSFL, however, also became home to the first meltdown of a power-producing reactor in the United States on July 13, 1959. Today, all nuclear research and most rocket testing has been halted.

Various research initiatives, such as the development of the Saturn rockets that powered the Apollo missions, the rockets that powered the vast ballistic missile arsenal of the United States during the Cold War years, and even a program to develop nuclear reactors for use in outer space were undertaken at the facility.