The Documentation

From the end of World War II until 1969, the Hunters Point Shipyard was home to the top-secret Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, the nation's foremost applied nuclear research facility, which handled a vast array of radioactive substances -- including, at one point, enough plutonium to kill 15 million people. In the early days of the Atomic Age, procedures for handling radioactive materials were shockingly lax by today's standards. During its research into NRDL procedures, SF Weeklygathered thousands of government documents. A sample of those documents is presented here in three databases:

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- Materials arranges documents that reference nuclear materials used and stored at the shipyard.

- Progress highlights NRDL activities discussed in routine progress reports.

- Researchincludes documents that identify early research projects NRDL scientists conducted.

FALLOUT Part 1: How nuclear researchers handled -- and grossly mishandled -- the Cold War's most dangerous radioactive substances at a top-secret lab inside the Hunters Point Shipyard. The same shipyard the city wants to remake as San Francisco's newest neighborhood.