Santa Susana Field Test Facility, California

Also known as the Rocketdyne Field Laboratory, this rambling 2,800-acre complex of 13 rocket engine test stands and other field test facilities was a major rocket engine and nuclear energy R&D facility located in the Simi Hills, northwest of Los Angeles, until its closing in 2006. The Apollo rocket engines were tested here, as were the early V-2 rockets of the German rocket pioneer Wernher Von Braun, who occasionally worked at the site. Rocketdyne operated the site on behalf of NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, until Boeing acquired Rockwell International (the parent company of Rocketdyne) in 1996. Fifty years worth of rocket engine and nuclear energy research, testing, and development, has left the site with widespread environmental contamination. Multiple low-power nuclear reactors were located on the grounds, including a sodium-cooled reactor which experienced a partial core meltdown in 1959. The resulting uncontrolled release of radioactive material into the atmosphere over a two week period is generally regarded as the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history. Many of the old rocket test stands remain, and the site is occasionally used as a film location.