Tuesday, August 10, 1999
Kentucky nuclear workers to get help
BY MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Energy Department will expand its promise of finding and compensating workers sickened in its bomb-production factories to include employees at a giant Kentucky plant that processed uranium for bombs and military reactors, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Monday.
Nuclear wastes and plutonium, which are even more dangerous than uranium, were mixed in with the uranium at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
Mr. Richardson said the department would look at health of employees at the plant, where uranium is sorted to separate the type that is easily split in reactors and bombs. Industrial hygiene at the plant was poor for decades, department officials say, but they are now looking into how those problems may have been made more serious by plutonium and other materials. Uranium is a toxic metal but is not highly radioactive.
A contractor, Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, prepared a report in 1992 that said the plant had used more than 100,000 tons of recycled uranium that included plutonium and other contaminants far more dangerous than those in the compound based on virgin uranium that Paducah usually processed.
Mr. Richardson made his announcement after the Washington Post reported Sunday that plant workers may have been made sick by plutonium, but he said his department had been looking into the matter since June.
“The reason it's an issue now,” Mr. Richardson said, “is that I have now made a determination that if a worker has an ailment that is connected with any type of radiation, then the government must pay.”
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