RE: EXPLOITED Secrecy took precedence over plant safety

["Grant Wilton" <gwilton@chem.swri.edu>]

Re: Exploited, blah, blah, blah

........and then there are people who buy a home next to an airport and
complain about the noise.
It's always the big, bad, profit-mongering corparation who is out to use and
abuse the worker. If you don't believe me read Karl Marx. The worker is
never responsible only a victim!! Come on everyone get with the program!!

these opinions are mine


G. Wilton
-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
[mailto:radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu]On Behalf Of Magnu96196@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 2:31 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: EXPLOITED Secrecy took precedence over plant safety


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:
 <A
HREF="http://204.120.16.85/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200003/30+005j_editorial.html+2
00

00330+editorial">http://204.120.16.85/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200003/30+005j_edito
r
i
 al.html+20000330+editorial</A>
 =========================================================
 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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