Ex-test site workers celebrate first day of remembrance

Former Nevada Test Site workers today marked the first National Day of Remembrance for those who were employed in the nation’s nuclear weapons programs during the Cold War.

The special day, promoted by the departments of Energy and Labor and a nonprofit organization, Cold War Patriots, drew about 200 people to the Atomic Testing Museum. That’s where a time capsule will begin a year-long journey to collect memorabilia, photographs and profiles of workers from many of the 300 sites in the nuclear weapons complex.

Troy Wade, a former Energy Department defense chief who is chairman of the museum, jokingly said he’d like the 3-foot-tall canister better “if it had a nose cone and some fins on it” similar to the delivery system for nuclear warheads.

Nevertheless, he said plans for displaying the time capsule were being worked out with one option to seal it and reopen it in 2045 to mark the 100th anniversary of Trinity, the first nuclear weapons test on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, N.M.

Cold War Patriots launched a petition drive this year for Congress to support a resolution for the National Day of Remembrance to raise awareness about the hundreds of thousands of former workers, many of whom developed fatal illnesses from exposure to toxic and radioactive materials.

A program to compensate the workers and their survivors has dragged on for nine years with complaints by many that it has not worked as designed.

“When I have a test site worker come to my office who says, 'You are waiting for all of us to die,’ it shakes the very foundations of my belief in this country,” Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said after today’s ceremony.

“It’s disgraceful that these workers are dying without the compensation this nation has promised them,” she said. “It is my hope through ceremonies honoring nuclear weapons workers that it will raise the consciousness of our nation and finally expedite the cases of these workers so they can get the compensation they are deserved and owed.”

On Thursday, program officials announced that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health will begin a “scientific and administrative review” of its responsibilities under the compensation program act.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.