ARTICLE TEXT FOR PRE-HEARING MEDIA
Senate hearings to focus
on K-25
from staff reports
U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., has announced that hearings into health and safety issues at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge and Portsmouth, Ohio, gaseous diffusion plants will be held March 22 in Washington, D.C.
Thompson, who is chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said several months ago he intended to hold the hearings, after a lawsuit filed at the sites' sister plant in Paducah, Ky., drew attention from the news media and Congress.
"This is an issue that has been of concern to me for some time," said Thompson in a news release. "If the federal government put workers in harm's way without their knowledge, we need to know about it and we need to do what we can to make it right."
The committee will examine what types of operations took place at the plants in Oak Ridge and Portsmouth, what information may come from planned DOE investigations at the plants, what contaminants workers may have been unwittingly exposed to and how workers can be compensated for the repercussions to their health.
The three plants enriched uranium for DOE's nuclear arsenal and nuclear reactors. DOE closed K-25 in 1985.
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SENATE TO INVESTIGATE PAST SAFETY PRACTICES PIKETON NUCLEAR PLANT
Date: Friday, March 3, 2000
Section: NEWS Page: 05C
Byline: Jonathan Riskind
Source: Dispatch Washington
Bureau
Whether the federal government put Cold War-era workers at southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant in harm's way will be front and center before a U.S. Senate committee this month.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing March 22 to investigate whether workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant were exposed unwittingly for decades to plutonium-tainted uranium and other dangerous materials that could cause serious illnesses.
"The federal government owes both current and former workers the truth about what materials they were exposed to on the job,'' said Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, chairman of the committee's Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee. Voinovich and Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., the full committee chairman, jointly announced the hearing yesterday.
"If the federal government put workers in harm's way without their knowledge, we need to know about it and we need to know what we can do to make it right,'' Thompson said.
The hearing comes as the Department of Energy is finishing its own investigation into Cold War-era practices at the Piketon, Ohio, plant and whether working conditions resulted in cancers and other illnesses.
Energy officials have interviewed hundreds of current and former workers at the Piketon plant, but have declined to release any preliminary findings.
Findings from the investigation, sparked partly by articles in The Dispatch, are to be issued by May.
The Clinton administration already has proposed giving workers who developed cancers and other illnesses at a sister facility in Paducah, Ky., up to $100,000 each if they were exposed to certain materials or held certain jobs.
The two plants produced nuclear weapons-grade uranium and were operated by the Energy Department until 1993. Currently, they are run by a privatized federal corporation, USEC, and produce only low-grade, commercial uranium for use as nuclear power-plant fuel.
In addition, Thompson noted that the Energy Department plans to investigate a third enrichment plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which is no longer in operation.
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Editorial: Don't leave ex-Test Site workers out
Today: March 03, 2000 at 9:06:43 PST
We won the Cold War in part because of the patriotic work performed by men and women at the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear weapons were detonated from 1951 to 1992. What the public did not realize, and what the federal government failed to acknowledge, was the level of danger and self-sacrifice those workers endured.
It was not until a Department of Energy hearing in North Las Vegas last week that many former Test Site employees publicly disclosed their exposure to hazardous materials that wrecked their health. As reported by the Sun's Mary Manning, they absorbed radiation, dust and asbestos as well as diesel fumes and toxic solvents. Many contracted lung disease and are dependent on oxygen tanks. Others need wheelchairs, canes or walkers.
It would be wrong to assume that individuals who tested nuclear weapons at the facility 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas should have known about the potential health risks. Many were kept in the dark about the hazardous materials they either handled or absorbed. Records that would have documented that exposure in many cases are nowhere to be found. But the fact that dozens of former Test Site workers have required hospitalization is evidence that they were not protected from unsafe levels of radiation and other contaminants.
One would think that these individuals would have been richly compensated by the federal government long ago. Sadly, this is not the case. The government's repeated failure to care for people who contracted serious ailments at top secret installations represents one of the darkest pages in our nation's history. We recognize the importance of maintaining secrecy over weapons testing to protect national security. But for the government to hide behind that secrecy, as an excuse to deny compensation to ailing workers, is inhumane.
That is why we join Nevada Democratic Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan in urging Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to amend his bill that would compensate ailing workers at DOE facilities in Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn. We believe current and former Test Site employees should also be covered by that legislation. Likewise, we encourage the Clinton administration to do what it can for those Nevadans.
Compensating workers for exposure to hazardous materials in Kentucky and Tennessee but not doing the same for Nevadans cannot be justified. If Bingaman has any doubts about the claims from ailing former Test Site workers, we invite him to Southern Nevada to see for himself.
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Compensation earned
Sunday, March 05, 2000
Nevada Test Site workers deserve to be included in bill.
For almost 50 years, workers at the Nevada Test Site toiled in service of their country to ensure the efficacy of America's nuclear arsenal. It's no stretch to say their efforts contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
"This legacy, unfortunately, also resulted in many health-related illnesses and deaths," Sen. Richard Bryan, the Nevada Democrat, said last week.
So it is the ultimate injustice that a pending bill to compensate workers suffering from health problems related to the radiation exposure they endured while handling nuclear weapons material doesn't include test site employees--only workers at plants in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson says that a report being compiled by the National Economic Council and expected to be released this month will address the issue of whether to expand compensation eligibility. He said he's optimistic that will occur.
But if it doesn't, Sen. Bryan and Sen. Harry Reid say they'll lobby to have the Nevada workers added to the pending legislation. If that fails, they'll introduce an amendment to accomplish the same.
Good.
At a Department of Energy hearing late last month, about 200 former test site workers turned out, many of them complaining about health problems they believe are caused by years of radiation exposure during the time nuclear weapons were exploded at the site. If Congress is willing to address similar complaints at other facilities, it should not ignore the plight of those who served their country at the Nevada Test Site.
05-Sun-2000/opinion/13087556.html
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml>
WHILE SENATE HOLDS DOE HEARING TODAY, NUCLEAR VICTIMS BLAST NARROW SCOPE
Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building,
Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org
* ipa@accuracy.org
Wednesday, March 22, 2000
WASHINGTON -- While the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee holds a hearing today to focus on health and safety issues at two Department of Energy atomic plants, representatives of workers and others subjected to radiation exposure say that the Senate panel is dodging a wide array of serious problems at DOE nuclear facilities across the country. Reporters and producers are invited to directly contact the following people for interviews:
TRISHA PRITIKIN, (510) 524-0834, [pager:] (510) 321-9126, triesq@aol.com The daughter of nuclear workers at the Hanford facility near Richland, Wash., Pritikin has serious thyroid ills. Both her parents died of cancer. “My brother died shortly after birth, in 1947, in the Hanford downwind area, part of a sudden and inexplicable number of neonatal deaths in the Hanford radiation exposure zone,” Pritikin said. “I am the only surviving member of my Hanford-exposed family.” She added today: “My situation is illustrative of why we must address the health concerns of workers, worker families, and off-site exposed. To be myopic and concentrate on only workers, or only workers at one or another site, or on only one or two health problems of workers, is to see only one small part of the big picture.”
GLENN BELL, (865) 482-7641, (865) 574-2712, wheezin2@aol.com, http://www.beryllium.org Bell, a leader of the Beryllium Victims Alliance, is a longtime worker at DOE’s nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Although he would be included in DOE proposals for compensation to employees exposed to toxic materials, Bell says the proposals are woefully inadequate -- excluding many thousands of Americans harmed by DOE facilities.
LORI GOODMAN, (970) 259-0199, [cell:] (970) 759-0795, kiyaani@frontier.net Goodman is among those spearheading efforts by Navajo uranium miners in the Southwest to receive compensation equal to coverage provided to non-native miners.
PAT BROUDY, (949) 661-0172, patbnaav@aol.com Pat Broudy is the widow of Chuck Broudy, a U.S. Marine involved in atomic tests in the Pacific and in Nevada. Her husband -- who died in 1978 of lymphoma -- was among more than 250,000 members of the U.S. armed forces exposed to atomic bomb tests at close range. Pat Broudy has extensive experience with government denials of radiation-related claims.
JAY TRUMAN, (208) 776-5903, hermit@downwinders.org, http://www.downwinders.org Founder and director of the Downwinders organization, Truman was born in Southern Utah in 1951. As a child living downwind of the Nevada Test Site, he watched more than 30 atomic blasts. For the past 33 years, he has been engaged in research and advocacy for all persons exposed to radiation from nuclear activities.
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020 or (202) 332-5055