NATION IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : Rules Issued for Radiation Payments

The government moved a step closer to providing compensation for cancer victims who lived downwind from nuclear bomb tests in the Nevada desert or mined uranium. Regulations were issued to pay those eligible up to $100,000. Up to 500 uranium miners, many of them Navajo Indians, in five western states and between 900 and 1,100 down-winders in certain counties of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, or their survivors, are eligible for the compensation. The Justice Department will distribute claim forms and brochures describing the program once the regulations are published in the Federal Register next week. The program also provides compensation for workers who developed cancer from participating in an official capacity in atmospheric atomic weapons testing at sites in Nevada, the Pacific Ocean or near Alamogordo, N.M. The Justice Department said it has created a special Radiation Exposure Compensation Unit in its Civil Division to process and adjudicate claims.