Former test site workers step closer to compensation

After nine years of denials and setbacks in a government program to compensate former Nevada Test Site employees for work-related illnesses, the retired nuclear weapons workers and survivors got some good news this week.

The agency charged with reconstructing their exposures to radioactive and toxic materials, which is key to proving or disproving their claims, has reversed its previous stance, saying instead the historic data needed for dose reconstructions is insufficient.

After a review of the tedious process, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, is recommending special status that will give more than 500 former Nevada Test Site workers the benefit of the doubt.

Their claims for at least $150,000 apiece plus medical expenses will be processed without having to estimate the exposures through costly and time-consuming dose reconstructions. The institute’s recommendation will have to be approved by a work group next month and later by a presidential advisory board and accepted by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Congress also will have a chance to reject the recommendation but that is unlikely, according to sources close to the program.

Dose reconstruction is a process of going back in time and trying to determine about how much radiation a particular worker was exposed to.

Approving the special status would mean former test site workers or their families from the days of below-ground nuclear weapons testing, 1963 to 1992, would only have to show they worked at the test site for 250 days during that period and were afflicted by one of the more than 20 cancers covered by the program.

“As presented in this position paper, NIOSH believes that there is insufficient information to adequately support ... reconstructing internal dose with sufficient accuracy,” reads the report issued Wednesday.

The report recommends special status for all employees from the Energy Department, its predecessor agencies, contractors and subcontractors who worked at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, from 1963 to 1992.

Workers during the years of above-ground nuclear weapons testing in Nevada, 1951 through 1962, already have been granted special exposure status.

In the years since the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program was announced in 2000, John Funk, chairman of the nonprofit Atomic Veterans and Victims of America Inc., has advocated reform in the program. Many times he has asked officials of the departments of Energy and Labor to put test site workers on par with out-of-state groups of Cold War nuclear workers who have been granted what’s known as “special exposure cohort” status.

“They caved in because everything they tried didn’t work,” he said Thursday, reacting to the NIOSH position paper.

“I’m glad to hear it. This has been long and hard.”

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