Testimony begins in nuclear workers’ hearing

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Sept. 21, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Miner Ray Slaughter of Las Vegas worked for 13 years hauling radiated rock away from nuclear bomb blast sites in the tunnels under the Nevada Test Site. Now it's time for the federal government to pay for the damage done to his ailing lungs, Slaughter was preparing to tell a congressional panel today.

"We'd go right in after the blast -- right after, days after," Slaughter said in an interview before his testimony. "We'd go right to ground-zero."

A House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing today in an effort to determine how to compensate workers from all over the country who built and tested the nation's nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. Many of those workers became ill and often died because of cancers and other illnesses caused by working with beryllium and radiation.

"They have no regrets about the work they did," Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told the subcommittee today. "They only regret their government put them in harm's way without their knowledge and consent."

In April, Richardson for the first time admitted that the federal government put nuclear workers at risk and covered it up. He and President Clinton have urged Congress to compensate the workers.

Now it's up to a panel of House and Senate members to determine which workers to pay and how much money to offer them.

Nevada members in Congress are worried Nevada workers who developed silicosis from breathing dust in the Test Site tunnels will not be included in the agreement this year.

In her testimony, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., specifically reminded the subcommittee that silicosis victims should be included.

Nevada's delegation says Republican House leaders are reluctant to include silicosis victims. Today, a top DOE official told the subcommittee that even Clinton has not made a final determination on whether to compensate silicosis victims this year.

"I'm certainly hopeful that the members of the Judiciary Committee will hear the stories of these heroic workers ... and once they hear that testimony they will see the importance of passing this legislation," David Michaels, DOE Assistant Secretary of the Office of Environmental Safety and Health, told the Sun after the hearing.

Slaughter said he was diagnosed with silicosis in 1998. The condition made it harder for him to breathe. He gave up golf and bowling, he said.

"It's similar to cancer, it starts eating away at the tissue of the lungs, it's like glass grinding away up and and down," Slaughter said.

Slaughter said radiation safety teams went into the tunnels after nuclear detonations but always sent workers in to clear out the rock, with no equipment to protect them -- even to adequately protect their hearing.

"They said it was safe," Slaughter said.

Slaughter has fruitlessly turned to the state for compensation, he said.

"The fact is they know they didn't give us protection and when you go before the state they treat you like a criminal, like you are trying to steal something from them," Slaughter said.

Now Slaughter is counting on Congress.

"Everyone seems to be on our side," he said. "I just hope they don't take silicosis out, because that's where we got it. We never had it before we went to work at the Test Site."