EXPLOITED Secrecy took precedence over plant safety

[Magnu96196@aol.com]

News from Paducah---------------how health physics protections were overcome 
by management.

This is more the real picture of gas diffusion plants and disregard for 
worker safety.  Same things happened in Oak Ridge and Portsmouth---------all 
operated by DOE-ORO.

Jim Phelps, formerly ORNL Sr. Dev. Staff ---rad instr design

Source:
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 00330+editorial">http://204.120.16.85/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200003/30+005j_editor
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 al.html+20000330+editorial</A>
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 EXPLOITED 
 Secrecy took precedence over plant safety 
  
 Indifferent. Irresponsible. Callous. These words come to mind in reviewing 
 retired workers' descriptions of conditions at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion 
 Plant during the period from the plant's opening in 1952 to the mid-1980s, 
 when the Cold War was winding down. 
 If the workers' accounts are accurate — and there is substantial evidence to 
 support their claims — the plant's operators and their overseer, the federal 
 government, displayed varying degrees of indifference, irresponsibility and 
 callousness in dealing with worker safety and environmental issues at the 
 uranium enrichment facility. 
 
 Apparently safety was not a top priority at the plant during the Cold War 
 era, although the risks of radioactive contamination certainly were not 
 unknown. The idea of protecting the environment seems to have been a foreign 
 concept. Plant employees and the federal officials who regulated their 
 activities used the site as a dumping ground for radioactive waste and other 
 hazardous materials. 
 
 In fact, the federal government used Paducah as an unregulated dump for 
other 
 nuclear facilities. The community knew, of course, that uranium was being 
 enriched here, but the government did not advise workers and the plant's 
 neighbors that materials contaminated with highly radioactive plutonium and 
 neptunium were shipped to Paducah. 
 
 It's pretty clear now that, in the Cold War-era nuclear program, secrecy 
 ranked far above safety on the government's priority list. 
 
 Safety lapses were common in the plant environment described by former 
 workers who spoke recently to the Sun's Joe Walker. It needs emphasizing 
that 
 several of these workers are plaintiffs in a $10 billion federal lawsuit 
that 
 alleges two former plant contractors, Union Carbide and Lockheed Martin, 
 jeopardized the health of plant employees by putting profits ahead of 
safety. 
 The two companies have denied the allegations contained in the lawsuit. 
 
 However, investigations conducted by the federal Department of Energy tend 
to 
 support at least some of the workers' claims. 
 
 For instance, the DOE has said workers at the plant's C-400 building were 
 exposed to toxic trichloroethylene and radioactive contamination. 
 
 Documents show that problems with neptunium contamination were detected as 
 early as 1957. A report written in 1960 by a medical researcher working for 
 the federal government predicted that questions surrounding the exposure of 
 Paducah workers to neptunium "will inevitably come more to the forefront." 
 
 Workers involved in the federal lawsuit say that the management of the plant 
 was lax and that safety rules were unevenly enforced. Describing the 
handling 
 of radioactive substances, Harold Hargan said, "Ignorance and apathy were 
 rampant." 
 
 Some of the workers recall that liquid samples of uranium were diluted and 
 then dumped in a holding pond. For years, chemical drainage from the C-400 
 building flowed directly into the soil — a fact that may explain why several 
 private wells near the plant were contaminated with trichloroethylene and 
 technetium. 
 
 These accounts make it easier to understand why the federal government will 
 spend somewhere around $1 billion cleaning up the plant site. Growing 
 evidence indicates the plant produced soil and groundwater pollution nearly 
 as routinely as it produced enriched uranium. 
 
 Given that the federal government is virtually immune from lawsuits, the 
 former plant contractors will have to bear the full brunt of litigation 
 arising from the alleged safety lapses. 
 
 The contractors should be held accountable if workers were exposed without 
 their knowledge to dangerous working conditions. However, the ultimate 
 accountability for the uranium enrichment plant rested with the federal 
 government. 
 
 Federal officials served as overseers and regulators. The federal government 
 called the shots, and monitored the results. 
 
 If working conditions at the plant were, in fact, unsafe, we are forced to 
 conclude that this was acceptable to the federal government. The disturbing 
 bottom line here may be that the government of all the people did not serve 
 the people of Paducah; it deliberately exploited them. 
 
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