U.S. to compensate nuke workers

Wednesday, April 12, 2000 | 11:19 a.m.

Ailing Nevada Test Site workers are in line for a share of $400 million in federal compensation that the Clinton administration said today will be paid to those exposed to radiation while building the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.

Parts of the unprecedented compensation package will require congressional approval. Nevada's congressional delegation promised they will support it.

President Clinton and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced details of the compensation that will pay $100,000 to workers with certain cancers. It is the first time the government has acknowledged responsibility for decades of unsafe working conditions at dozens of nuclear bomb sites nationwide.

Richardson called the compensation plan an effort to reverse decades of denying workers' claims "and moving forward to do the right thing."

The compensation package called for the Department of Energy contractors not to oppose workers' health claims, an unprecedented stance on the part of the federal government.

The plan is expected to spend $400 million over the first five years, then costs are estimated to decline as cases are settled, according to a draft issued by the White House Economic Council.

More than 600,000 men and women at 16 major sites and dozens of smaller facilities built 70,000 nuclear warheads over 50 years. Workers testified that they were exposed to radiation as well as hazardous chemicals such as solvents and the metal beryllium. More than 400 workers from the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, attended hearings on the compensation plan in Southern Nevada in February.

Since the 1960s, government medical surveys indicated higher rates of cancers ranging from thyroid tumors to leukemia at most of the major nuclear weapons facilities. A slight increase in leukemia was documented after the 1950s above-ground blasts at the Test Site.

The government maintained silence on the subject under a cloak of national security, never acknowledging a link between cancers and working conditions at nuclear facilities, Clinton and Richardson said.

The DOE also plans to establish a workers' advocacy office, effective next month. The new Occupational Illness Compensation Office would speed up claims, using independent physicians to determine whether workers became ill from their jobs. If a link is made, the DOE would accept responsibility for the illness.

Workers or their survivors who contracted cancer after exposure to radiation on the job may choose between a lump-sum payment of $100,000 immediately or a wait for a negotiated benefits package that could be much larger, which Congress must still approve. Common cancers covered under the program include leukemias and myelomas, cancers of the bone, lung and thyroid.

If workers cannot find their exposure records, the government "will assume they were exposed to the highest amount of radiation associated with the tasks they performed."

The same coverage will be offered to workers who were exposed to beryllium, a highly toxic metal used in nuclear weapons production. Test Site workers who labored in the tunnels where underground blasts were conducted could be eligible for this compensation, DOE officials said.

Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., who attended the DOE's announcement in Washington today, asked about Test Site workers who developed spots on their lungs from exposure to dust while drilling those tunnels -- workers who are not covered under the plan announced today.

Reid, who talked to Richardson about the report this morning, said he would take the lead on adding the workers to the congressional bill. The DOE was taking a "very compassionate" approach to aiding all ailing workers, he said.

"How could you not include workers at a site where 1,000 above- and below-ground nuclear devices were set off?" Reid asked. "People were working in those tunnels, they were down in the shafts, the same shafts where time and again tests were detonated."

Bryan remembered the days of his youth when government officials said exposure to radioactive fallout would not cause any problems.

"Today's announcement ends a disgraceful decades-long pattern of denial and secrecy by the U.S. government against its own workers," Bryan said. "For workers who became ill after radiation exposure, some with cancer and other serious illnesses, to have been met with the turned back of their government all these years is a shame."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., wrote a letter to Clinton and attended the hearings in Las Vegas. She hailed the DOE announcement as a "great victory for Nevada."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said "It's great news for Nevadans. It won't lessen the suffering, but it is the right thing to do."

Gibbons, a Gulf War veteran, said the nation owed the Test Site workers the same care and respect as those who served in war.

Reporter Benjamin Grove, of the Sun Washington, D.C., bureau, contributed to this report.

Mary Manning covers environmental issues for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4065or by e-mail at manning@lasvegassun.com.