This week marks the 50th anniversary of one of the Los Angeles area's
most closely guarded secrets -- the partial meltdown of an experimental
nuclear reactor operated by Atomics International Inc. near Chatsworth.
For 20 years information of the event had been confined to a terse,
euphemistically worded press release issued a month after the accident,
as well as whispered conversations among nuclear energy officials and
reports quietly buried in libraries affiliated with the Atomic Energy
Commis
