Funds OKd for Sick Nuclear Workers

A year after the government apologized to Cold War-era workers made sick by their jobs in the nuclear weapons industry, Congress is poised to follow through with legislation to give financial compensation to victims.

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a defense bill that contains a provision granting thousands of eligible workers or their heirs $150,000 each. Surviving workers would also be eligible for government-paid health care for life.

The Senate is scheduled to follow suit on the bill as early as today and President Clinton is expected to sign it.

To advocates, the legislation is more than a matter of money for people affected by radiation-related sickness. It is about a national recognition that many workers risked their lives--or lost them--to help the United States wage the Cold War. Some worked in uranium mines, others for defense contractors or at national nuclear weapon or atomic-energy installations.

Wednesday’s action was a victory for the Clinton administration. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson had pressed for a compensation package after he made a landmark admission in September 1999 at the Paducah, Ky., site of a gaseous diffusion plant where workers were exposed to radioactive plutonium. “On behalf of the United State government, I am here to say I’m sorry,” Richardson said.

While much of the ensuing attention has focused on the plight of workers at installations in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington state, a number of sites in California also are listed by the Department of Energy as places that handled beryllium, silica and radioactive materials in the national nuclear weapons program.

Among them are such well-known sites as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Livermore unit of Sandia National Laboratories, which were responsible for weapons research, production and design.

Other, lesser-known sites on the list in Southern California include Atomic International in Canoga Park, site of beryllium refining and fabrication; Ceradyne Inc. in Santa Ana, a plant that handled beryllium, and the General Atomics Division of General Dynamics Corp. in San Diego, site of weapons research and development and beryllium refining and fabrication.

Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Pleasanton), a member of the House Armed Services Committee who represents a district that includes Livermore, said that the legislation would “begin the path toward compensation for these cold warriors that have been unheralded heretofore. Nobody got a medal, nobody got a parade and many of them now have cancer or equally debilitating diseases.”

The legislation could provide relief for 3,000 to 4,000 of those who worked at nuclear weapon facilities--or the heirs of those workers--and as many as 10,000 miners who contracted cancer or other illnesses after exposure to radiation or toxins such as beryllium and silica. Advocates said that the relief is long overdue, following decades of official denials that a widespread problem even existed.

The workers “did what their country asked of them,” said Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “Unfortunately, their country was not always there for them, or up front about what they were exposed to.”

The 382-31 House vote on the defense bill belied intense politicking that had threatened to derail the compensation plan. As recently as late September, House GOP leaders had raised objections to the proposal as a risky new entitlement program. A bipartisan group of senators pressed the House leaders to reconsider.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the program’s cost at $1.9 billion over 10 years. Workers or their heirs who take the money would be precluded from filing lawsuits.

The legislation expands on a program already available for sickened miners that grants them up to $100,000. Under the new bill, they would be eligible for $50,000 more plus medical care to give them the same level of benefits as those who got sick in factory jobs.