Clinton Plan Will Compensate Workers for Radiation Exposure

The Clinton administration, vowing to “right the wrongs of the past,” will unveil plans today to compensate thousands of ailing workers who were exposed to radiation while helping to build the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

The unprecedented national compensation plan will offer payments to workers with certain cancers in the first tangible acknowledgment of responsibility for decades of unsafe working conditions in dozens of nuclear bomb factories around the country.

Thousands of other workers would receive help in applying for compensation under liberalized policies that reverse decades of government antagonism to workers’ medical claims, according to a draft of the plan obtained by the Washington Post. In addition, workers would receive the benefit of the doubt when plant medical records are missing or flawed.