Editor's Note

Dan Hirsch, 2/12/50 - 7/19/25

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Ever since I launched my Substack last month, subscribers have been signing on at an alarming rate. I’ve lost count, but I think it’s up to three now.

Of course, I haven’t actually posted anything until today, partly because I feared doing so might increase my readership and if I “Follow Back” all those new readers, I’ll have less time to write than I have now. Luckily, my current subscribers have thus far matched my lack of output, keeping my time schedule manageable.

Then, I learned about something I want to share. It’s about the untimely passing of Dan Hirsch, a man who did as much as anyone to advocate for environmental safety in America, particularly in the area surrounding Los Angeles County’s Santa Susana Field Lab, which happens to be a few miles from my house across the Simi Hills.

Now, I don’t expect to be writing too many obits in this space, and I sure don’t know enough about environmental policy to tackle nuclear cleanup and regulation on an ongoing basis. But you’ve gotta start somewhere, right? And I didn’t want Dan Hirsch’s passing to go unnoticed.

Hirsch was teaching a class at UCLA called Energy Alternatives and Public Policy in 1979, when the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history occurred at Three Mile Island. His students asked if anything remotely similar had ever happened near L.A., and he showed them how to do the research to find out. After a lot of digging, they discovered to their surprise – and to Hirsch's too – that in fact there had been a partial meltdown at a nuclear plant in Ventura County 20 years earlier, and it was an even more toxic event than the one at Three Mile Island,

How could it be that such an accident could occur just outside the nation’s second biggest city, and almost no one knew about it but Dan Hirsch and a bunch of nerdy college undergrads?

As it happened, scientists had been developing nuclear reactors for a company called Atomics International at that Santa Susana Field Lab site for several years. By ‘57 they had briefly achieved a symbolic goal of supplying nuclear power to the commercial grid of an agricultural area near the city of Thousand Oaks. Moorpark, CA, thus became the first U.S. town ever to get electricity from a nuclear reactor.

Things went south in July of 1959 when the reactor sprang a leak and gradually suffered a partial meltdown. Operators could tell something wonky was going on. They kept inspecting and restarting the reactor, a process that made things worse, until they finally shut it down for good a couple of weeks later. By then, about a third of the core had melted down, releasing unquantifiable amounts of radiation into the environment.

Unlike at TMI, where the reactor was contained in a four-foot thick, steel-lined concrete shell, the brilliant scientific minds of the ‘50s just stuck the Santa Susana reactor out in the open air, several miles from the city, where they figured everything would be okay. Many believe that the poison unleashed during those two weeks has caused cancer clusters we’ve been seeing in an area near the field lab for decades.

Bad enough, you say, but then there was the coverup. Atomics International and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission never referred to the accident as a “meltdown,” which it most certainly was. Whatever oblique references they made to it at all were buried in technical appendices and never released to the press or the public.

Until Dan Hirsch led that UCLA investigation in 1979.

The discovery launched Hirsch onto a path of hardcore public activism, especially regarding nuclear safety, and he never let up. He founded a nonprofit group that helped develop a plan for the state of California to require a complete cleanup of the property. The Boeing Company, which had acquired the field lab years earlier, had hired a ridiculous number of attorneys and lobbyists to fight against that result, but Hirsch pushed it through.

Over the years, he became the go-to source for those seeking information on the safety of U.S. nuclear programs and an effective activist when he saw corners being cut. He testified countless times before Congress, helped influence nuclear waste policy, and mentored young activists around the nation.

For me, one example hits home: Boeing was still refusing to sign the landmark agreement and whining about its expense when Dan came to my neighborhood to rouse community support. He was soft-spoken and serious, but brimming with a kind of righteous fervor you might see from a campus religious leader. He never seemed to get too worked up – at least not until someone proposed that the high school students in attendance could mount a publicity campaign, holding a bake sale for Boeing to help the beleaguered company meet its civic and environmental responsibility. That was the first time I ever saw Dan smile with excitement.

The kids, including my daughter Robin, got excited too. They dubbed themselves the Teens Against Toxins and formulated a plan to sell baked goods like “chocolate meltdown cake” as well as “radioactive goldfish” and “atomic fireballs” at a neighborhood park. Eventually, they produced an oversized check for the $99.31 they raised and invited some media organizations to watch them try to present it to a Boeing spokesperson in front of the company’s headquarters.

Needless to say, they had about as much success changing Boeing’s mind as everybody else did; the company is still fighting its legal requirement 15 years later.

But Dan kept plugging away, and to a lesser extent so did the rest of us. I stayed in touch with him for years, pitching in occasionally by writing press releases and attending meetings. Robin wrote about the bake sale for the Huffington Post, was featured on various news outlets, and went on to become a respected journalist. Her friends have gone separate ways, but it’s safe to assume they’re all making a difference.

And we all remember what Dan modeled for us. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you keep fighting.

Suffering from a debilitating fever this year, he put together a powerful, 10-minute Zoom presentation, complete with charts and graphics for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, arguing against one of our fearless leader’s Executive Orders that could create a serious cancer risk to as much as 80 percent of the American public. On a video recording of the Zoom meeting, his voice, slightly weakened from his then-undisclosed illness, nevertheless sounds urgent and assured.

Two days after making that presentation, Hirsch died at his home near Santa Cruz, CA, at age 78.

Trump’s Executive Order continues on its path through a process that could see final rules established by November, 2026. Hirsch’s testimony is said to have galvanized notable scientific and public health pushback against it.