And the DOE boondoggle continues...

[Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

Nuke Plant Neighbors Seek Help

May 7, 2000
 Filed at 6:07 p.m. EDT
 By The Associated Press
 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Armed with homemade maps showing which way the
winds blow and where cancer victims live, neighbors of nuclear weapons
plants spread across Capitol Hill on Monday to lobby for lifetime
medical testing. 
 ``We need a comprehensive program to monitor our health and train
local doctors to treat us properly,'' said Doris Smith, who lives on a
farm near the Pantex Nuclear Plant outside Amarillo, Texas. ``We did
not choose to be part of this tragedy.'' 
 The Department of Energy, which oversees the nation's network of
roughly 20 nuclear weapons research labs, processing plants and
assembly facilities, has wrestled for years with the legacy of Cold
War-era practices that sometimes placed bomb production and secrecy
over safety. 
 In the past 10 years, the government has declassified documents
showing releases of uranium, tritium and other radioactive materials
from the plants. Also documented: worker exposure to plutonium and
unsafe storage practices that led to dangerous chemicals leaching into
drinking water supplies. 
 DOE recently asked Congress for permission to give a minimum of
$100,000 to weapons plant workers who developed radiation-related
cancers. Plant neighbors hope the move bodes well for their efforts. 
 Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability said he has
arranged similar lobbying trips, but found a better reception this
year following DOE's overture to plant workers. 
 The DOE's top health official, Assistant Secretary David Michaels,
said the agency wants to do right by people who have been harmed, but
does not yet have the scientific basis to identify accurately exposed
populations near all the weapons plants. 
 ``We believe if we made people sick we should take care of them and
if we're exposing people to dangers, we have to stop,'' Michaels said.
``The department has focused a tremendous amount of energy on the very
justified concerns raised by sick workers all around the complex and
we've put tremendous amounts of resources into re-examining the
scientific evidence all around the country.'' 
 The Department of Health and Human Services is conducting
epidemiological studies of weapons-plant neighbors, but it is
impossible to say yet how many people were made ill, Michaels said. 
 People living near the Fernald Environmental Management Project in
Ohio sued in 1985. They reached a settlement four years later calling
for the federal government to spend $78 million for medical tests,
health monitoring and other issues related to plant contamination. 
 ``It's a moral and an ethical issue,'' said Fernald neighbor Lisa
Crawford of Harrison, Ohio. ``It is now time to apply the Fernald
precedent across the complex.'' 
 The weapons complex is diverse and widespread, with some plants, such
as the Nevada Test Site, placed in sparsely populated areas and
others, like Rocky Flats in Denver, in metropolitan areas. 
 Efforts to pin down offsite exposures vary, depending on the sites.
The government has already completed a project that determined how
many contaminants were released throughout the history of the Hanford
reservation in Washington state. 
 Such projects at other sites are not as far along or more difficult
to compile, the DOE says. 
 Nuclear plant neighbors want the government to provide biennial
medical exams; training for local doctors; a computerized archive of
people exposed on the job and outside the plants' perimeters; and a
plain-language description of the risks they face from contamination. 
 Neither the lobbying activists nor the DOE estimated how many people
might qualify for testing or the cost. 
 ------ 
 On the Net: http://www.doe.gov 
 http://www.ananuclear.org
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