Test Site workers call for medical compensation

Robert Macy

Friday, Feb. 25, 2000 | 3:44 a.m.

Fred Love didn't know he was piloting a helicopter through invisible clouds of radiation when he swept across the remote Nevada Test Site 15 years ago.

His top secret work cost him an eye and a career, and now he's joining a long list of former nuclear weapons workers who want compensation for what they believe was their government's dirty secret.

Love, 60, was one of more than two dozen workers who testified Friday at an Energy Department hearing on efforts to extend federal compensation to thousands of workers involved in the nation's nuclear weapons testing program between 1951 and 1992.

The hearing comes on the heels of a Clinton administration proposal to compensate current and former DOE employees at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Paducah, Ky.

The workers involved at the Nevada site are not included in current compensation negotiations. But a parade of witnesses - some hobbling on canes, others appearing in wheelchairs - pressed their case at Friday's hearing.

In a prepared statement Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said the government conducted the testing, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, without informing workers of the dangers.

"The effects of atmospheric testing were undoubtably understood by the Atomic Energy Commission ... but the harmful effects remained in a shroud of secrecy as workers were continually subjected to a potential deadly working environment," Bryan said.

Love said he flew a helicopter for a test site contractor in 1985 and 1986, sweeping over the remote desert site at altitudes as low as 50 feet after underground nuclear weapons tests. He said he learned from newspaper accounts a year later that some of the tests vented radiation from underground caverns where the blasts were conducted.

Love said he began to lose sight in his right eye, then learned he had a cancerous tumor in the eye which doctors said was caused by radiation exposure. The eye was removed in 1997, ending his 30-year career as a helicopter pilot.

"It has had a financial and emotional impact on our family," Love told Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Dr. David Michaels, DOE assistant secretary of environmental safety and health.

The two watched intently as workers testified

Wayne Cates, a former test site ironworker for 18 years, stopped often to catch his breath, saying he is on a waiting list for a new lung to replace one destroyed by the respiratory disease silicosis.

"I'm told that after a lung transplant I'll have a 60 percent chance of living five more years," Cates said, his voice breaking. "I just had my first grandson. I hope I can live more than five years. I'm going to give it my best shot."

Robert Kromrei made his way to the speaker's table in a wheelchair. He said he would handle weapons materials in his hands and would work in contaminated areas. Today, he said, he suffers from severe lung damage, has had pneumonia nine times in eight years, and has had "15 to 25 skin cancers removed."

Beverly Aleck said she has fought the federal government for 25 years, seeking compensation in the death of her husband, who was involved in nuclear weapons testing in Alaska.

"I wish I could tell you my government was responsive and compassionate," she said. "Instead they used a scorched earth defense, telling lies to make me and my claims go away."

In a statement, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that as a boy he watched and felt the nuclear tests from his hometown of Searchlight, Nev., 100 miles to the south.

He said it was time to "lift the veil of secrecy" surrounding the country's nuclear activities and compensate workers who are suffering.

Berkley said it was "unconscionable" that Americans who risked their lives in the nuclear weapons program would be denied compensation after the federal government "finally admits culpability."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said in a statement that one of the greatest campaigns of the Cold War was waged at the test site, and the government could not turn away from its responsibility.

DOE's Michaels praised the former workers.

"We're grateful for all your work," he said. "There are people in this room who are heroes. Without you, we wouldn't have won the Cold War. At the same time, we made you sick."

Michaels said he plans to report to Clinton in March on the extent of the problem.