June 8, 2000 U.S. Senate Debate on DOE Nuclear Weapons Workers Compensation Bill

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NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--CONTINUED (Senate - 
June 08, 2000)
AMENDMENTS NOS. 3235 THROUGH 3251, EN BLOC
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I send a series of amendments to the desk that 
have been cleared by the ranking member and myself. 
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report. 
The legislative clerk read as follows: 
The Senator from Virginia [Mr. Warner], proposes amendments numbered 3235 
through 3251, en bloc. 
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be 
agreed to en bloc, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that 
any statements relating to these individual amendments be printed in the 
Record. 
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. 
The amendments (Nos. 3235 through 3251) were agreed to en bloc, as follows. 
* * * * * * * * * * 
AMENDMENT NO. 3250
(PURPOSE: TO PROVIDE COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS TO DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY 
EMPLOYEES AND CONTRACTOR EMPLOYEES FOR EXPOSURE TO BERYLLIUM, RADIATION, AND 
OTHER TOXIC SUBSTANCES)
(The text of the Amendment is printed in today's Record under `Amendments 
Submitted.') 
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I strongly support this important step to 
compensate workers who became sick from occupational exposure to beryllium, 
radiation, and other toxic substances as part of the Cold War build-up. I 
commend my colleagues Senator Thompson, Senator Voinovich, Senator DeWine, 
and Senator Bingaman for their leadership on this issue. 

During the cold war, thousands of men and women who worked at the nation's 
atomic weapons plants were exposed to unknown hazards. Many were exposed to 
dangerous radioactive and chemical materials at far greater levels than their 
employers revealed. The debilitating, and often fatal, illnesses suffered by 
these workers came in many forms of cancer, as well as other illnesses that 
are difficult to diagnose. This provision brings long overdue relief to these 
workers and their families. 

The Department of energy investigated this issue. It found that workers who 
served for years to maintain and strengthen our defenses during the cold War 
were not informed or protected against the health hazards they faced at work. 
Only during the Clinton Administration has the government openly acknowledged 
that these workers were exposed to materials that were much more 
radioactive--and much more deadly--than previously revealed. 

I commend Secretary Richardson for his leadership in bringing this issue to 
light, and for his efforts to close this tragic chapter in the nation's 
history for the thousands of workers and their families whose lives were 
affected. 

On of the earliest instances of the health dangers of beryllium occurred 
during World War II at the Sylvania Company in Salem, Massachusetts. At this 
plant, doctors first identified cases of beryllium disease, an acute and 
often fatal lung illness that seemed similar to tuberculosis. At the time, 
the company used beryllium in manufacturing fluorescent light bulbs. 

Some of the earliest radiation experiments were conducted at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge as part of the Manhattan 
Project. Scientists at MIT were also among the first to conduct experiments 
with beryllium oxide ceramics for the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy 
Corporation. Many of the first cases of beryllium disease occurred among 
these scientists. 

We have an opportunity today to remedy the wrongs suffered by these 
Department of Energy workers. Our amendment creates a basic framework for 
compensation. It is the least we can do for workers who made such great 
sacrifices for our country during the cold war. They have already waited too 
long for this relief. 


[Page: S4755]  GPO's PDF
Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment along with a 
bipartisan group of Senators, including Senator Bingaman, Senator Voinovich, 
Senator Kennedy, Senator DeWine, Senator Reid, Senator Thurmond, Senator 
Bryan, Senator Frist, Senator Murray, Senator Murkowski, Senator Harkin, and 
Senator Stevens. 

Mr. President, watching President Clinton's summit meeting with Russian 
President Vladimir Putin last weekend, I think we were all reminded of how 
far our two nations have come over the past decade, since President Reagan 
implored President Gorbachev to `tear down (the Berlin) Wall,' and President 
Bush presided over its destruction. While dangerous new threats have emerged, 
the Cold War that dominated the politics of our security for four decades is 
over, and the United States won. We should be proud of that victory and we 
should never forget the strength and resolve through which it was achieved. 

But it has become clear in recent months that that victory came at a high 
price for some of those who were most responsible for producing it. I am 
talking about workers in our nuclear weapons facilities run by the Department 
of Energy or their contractors. We now have evidence that, in at least some 
instances, the federal government that they had dedicated themselves to 
serving put these workers in harm's way without their knowledge. 

I first became concerned about this issue three years ago when my hometown 
newspaper, the Nashville Tennessean, published a series of stories describing 
a pattern of unexplained illnesses in the Oak Ridge, Tennessee area. Many of 
the current and former Oak Ridge workers profiled in the stories believed 
that their illnesses were related to their service at the Department of 
Energy site. In 1997, I asked the Director of the Centers for Disease Control 
to send a team to Oak Ridge to assess the situation and to try to determine 
if what we were seeing there was truly unique. Unfortunately, in the end, the 
CDC did not take a broad enough look at the situation to really answer the 
questions that had been raised. 

And that, of course, has been a pattern at Oak Ridge and at many DOE sites 
over the years. Countless health studies have been done, some on very narrow 
populations and some on larger ones, some showing some correlations and some 
not able to reach any conclusions at all. The data is mixed, some of it is 
flawed, and we are left with a situation that is confusing and from which it 
is very difficult to draw any definite conclusions. 

And yet, there is a growing realization that there are illnesses among 
current and former DOE workers that logic tells us are related to their 
service at these weapons sites. For example, hundreds of current and former 
workers in the DOE complex have been diagnosed with Chronic Beryllium 
Disease. Many more have so-called `beryllium sensitivity,' which often 
develops into Chronic Beryllium Disease. The only way to contract either of 
these conditions is to be exposed to beryllium powder. The only entities that 
use beryllium in that form are the Department of Energy and the Department of 
Defense. 

And there are other examples, perhaps less clear cut, but certainly worthy of 
concern. Uranium, plutonium, and a variety of heavy metals found in people's 
bodies. Anecdotes about hazardous working conditions where people were 
unprotected against both exposures they knew were there and exposures of 
which they were not aware. It's time for the federal government to stop 
automatically denying any responsibility and face up to the fact that it 
appears as though it made at least some people sick. 

The question now is: what do we do about it? And how do we make sure it never 
happens again? 

This amendment attempts to answer the first of those two questions. It would 
set up a program, administered by the Department of Labor, to provide 
compensation to employees who are suffering from chronic beryllium disease, 
or from a radiation-related cancer that is determined to likely have been 
caused by exposures received in the course of their service at a DOE 
facility. It would also provide a mechanism for employees suffering from 
exposures to hazardous chemicals and other toxic substances in the workplace 
to gain access to state workers' compensation benefits, which are generally 
denied for such illnesses at present. 

Mr. President, our amendment takes a science-based approach. It is not a 
blank check. It does not provide benefits to anyone and everyone who worked 
at a DOE facility who has taken ill. 

In the case of beryllium, we can say with certainty that if someone has 
chronic beryllium disease and they worked around beryllium powder, their 
disease is work-related; there is no other way to get it. 

The same is not true of cancer, of course. A physician cannot look at a tumor 
and say with certainty that it was caused by exposure to radiation, or by 
smoking, or by a genetic disposition, or by any other factor. However, we do 
know that radiation in high doses has been linked to certain cancers, and we 
now know that some workers at DOE facilities were exposed to radiation, often 
with inadequate protections. 

What this amendment does is employ a mechanism developed by scientists at the 
National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute to determine 
whether a worker's cancer is at least as likely as not related to exposures 
received in the course of their employment at a DOE facility. The model takes 
into account the type of cancer, the dose received, the worker's age at the 
time of exposure, sex, lifestyle factors such as whether the worker smoked, 
and other relevant factors. 

In many, if not most, cases, it should be possible to determine with a 
sufficient degree of accuracy the radiation dose a particular worker or group 
of workers received. However, in some cases--because the Department of Energy 
kept inadequate or incomplete records, altered some of its records, and even 
tampered with the dosimetry badges that workers were supposed to wear--it may 
not be possible to estimate with any degree of certainty the radiation dose a 
certain worker received. For these workers, who are really the victims of 
DOE's bad behavior, our amendment provides an expedited track to compensation 
for a specified list of radiation-related cancers. 

Mr. President, the Governmental Affairs Committee, which I chair, held a 
hearing on this issue back in March. We heard testimony from several workers 
from Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Piketon, Ohio who are suffering from 
devastating illnesses as a result of their service to our country. And of 
course, it is not just the workers who are affected--it is their entire 
family that suffers emotionally, financially, and even physically. 

In the end, we must remember that these workers were helping to win the cold 
war, to defend our Nation and protect our security. They were patriotic and 
proud of the work that they were doing. If the Federal Government made 
mistakes that jeopardized their health and safety, then we need to do what we 
can to make it right. That is what this amendment would do. I want to thank 
the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner, for his 
support, as well as Senator Levin. I urge the rest of my colleagues to 
support it as well. 


[Page: S4756]  GPO's PDF
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with Senator Thompson and 
others in offering this strongly bipartisan amendment. It addresses 
occupational illnesses scientifically found to be associated with the DOE 
weapons complex, that have occurred and are now occurring because of 
activities during the cold war. 

This amendment is a joint effort of a bipartisan group of Senators. 
Specifically, it has been put together by staff for myself, Senator Fred 
Thompson, Senator George Voinovich, Senator Mike DeWine, and Senator Ted 
Kennedy. We have worked with the administration, with worker groups, and with 
manufacturers. The staff have met with Armed Services Committee staff during 
the development of this amendment, and I want to acknowledge the chairman and 
ranking member of the Armed Services Committee for their support for this 
amendment. 

The workers in the DOE nuclear weapons complex, both at the production plants 
and the laboratories, helped us win the cold war. But that effort left a 
tragic environmental and human legacy. We are spending billions of dollars 
each year on the environmental part--cleaning up the physical infrastructure 
that was contaminated. But we also need to focus on the human legacy. 

This amendment is an attempt to put right a situation that should not have 
occurred. But it proposes to do so in a way that is based on sound science. 

The amendment focuses federal held on three classes of injured workers. 

The first group is workers who were involved with beryllium. Beryllium is a 
non-radioactive metal that provokes, in some people, a highly allergic lung 
reaction. The lungs become scarred, and no longer function. 

The second group is workers who dug the tunnels for underground nuclear tests 
and are today suffering from chronic silicosis due to their occupational 
exposures to silica, which were not adequately controlled by DOE. 

The third group of workers are those who had dangerous doses of radiation on 
the job. 

These workers were employed at numerous current and former DOE facilities. We 
have included a general definition of DOE and other type of facilities in the 
legislation, in lieu of including a list that might be incomplete, but for 
purposes of helping in the implementation of this amendment, if enacted into 
law, I would like to ask unanimous consent that a non-exclusive list of the 
facilities intended to be covered under this amendment be printed in the 
Record following my statement. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. 

[See exhibit 1.] 

Mr. BINGAMAN. For beryllium workers, there are tests today that can detect 
the first signs of trouble, called beryllium sensitivity, and also the actual 
impairment, called chronic beryllium disease. If you have beryllium 
sensitivity, you are at a higher risk for developing chronic beryllium 
disease. You need annual check-ups with tests that are expensive. If you 
develop chronic beryllium disease, you might be disabled or die. 

This amendment sets up a federal workers' compensation program to provide 
medical benefits to workers who acquired beryllium sensitivity as a result of 
their work for DOE. It provides both medical benefits and lost wage 
protection for workers who suffer disability or death from chronic beryllium 
disease. 

For radiation, the situation is more complex. Radiation is proven to cause 
cancer in high doses. But when you look at a cancer tumor, you can't tell for 
sure whether it was caused by an alpha particle of radiation from the 
workplace, a molecule of a carcinogen in something you ate, or even a stray 
cosmic ray from outer space. But scientists can make a good estimate of the 
types of radiation doses that make it more likely than not that your cancer 
was caused by a workplace exposure. 

This amendment puts the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 
charge of making the causal connection between specific workplace exposures 
to radiation and cancer. Within the HHS, it is envisioned by this amendment 
that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (or NIOSH) 
take the lead for the tasks assigned by this amendment. Thus, the definition 
section of the amendment specifies that the Secretary of HHS act with the 
assistance of the Director of NIOSH. This assignment follows a decision made 
in DOE during the Bush Administration, and ratified by the National Defense 
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993, to give NIOSH the lead in identifying 
levels of exposure at DOE sites that present employees with significant 
health risks. 

HHS was also given a Congressional mandate, in the Orphan Drug Act, to 
develop and publish radioepidemiolog-ical tables that estimate `the 
likelihood that persons who have or have had any of the radiation related 
cancers and who have received specific doses prior to the onset of such 
disease developed cancer as a result of those doses.' I would like to ask 
unanimous consent that a more detailed discussion of how the bill envisions 
these guidelines would be used be included as an exhibit at the end of my 
remarks. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. 

[See exhibit 2.] 

Mr. BINGAMAN. Under guidelines developed by the HHS and used in this 
amendment, if your radiation does was high enough to make it at least as 
likely as not that your cancer was DOE-work-related, you would be eligible 
for compensation for lost wages and medical benefits. 

The HHS-based method will work for many of the workers at DOE sites. But it 
won't work for a significant minority who were exposed to radiation, but for 
whom it would be infeasible to reconstruct their dose. 

There are several reasons why reconstructing a dose might be--this 
infeasibility might exist. First, relevant records of dose may be lacking, or 
might not exist altogether. Second, there might be a way to reconstruct the 
dose, but it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. Finally, it might 
take so long to reconstruct a dose for a group of workers that they will all 
be dead before we have an answer that can be used to determine their 
eligibility. 

One of the workers who testified at my Los Alamos hearing might be an example 
of a worker who could fall into the cracks of a system that operated solely 
on dose histories. He was a supervisor at what was called the `hot dump' at 
Los Alamos. All sorts of radioactive materials were taken there to be 
disposed of. It is hard to reconstruct who handled what. And digging up the 
dump to see what was there would not only be very expensive, it would expose 
new workers to radiation risks that could be large. 

There are a few groups of workers that we know, today, belong in this 
category. They are specifically mentioned in the definition of Special 

Exposure Cohort. For other workers to be placed in this special category, the 
decision that it was infeasible to reconstruct their dose would have to be 
made both by HHS and by an independent external advisory committee of 
radiation, health, and workplace safety experts. We allow groups of workers 
to petition to be considered by the advisory committee for inclusion in this 
group. Once a group of workers was placed in the category, it would be 
eligible for compensation for a fixed list of radiation-related cancers. 

The program in this amendment also allows, in section 3515, for a lump-sum 
payment, combined with ongoing medical coverage under section 8103 of title 
5, United States Code. This could be helpful, for example, in settling old 
cases of disability. It may be a good deal for survivors of deceased workers 
whose deaths were related to their work at DOE sites. 

The provisions of the workers' compensation program in this amendment are 
largely modeled after the Federal Employee's Compensation Program or FECA, 
which is found in chapter 81 of title 5, United States Code. In many parts of 
the amendment, entire sections of FECA are incorporated by reference. In 
other sections, portions of FECA are restated in more general language to 
account for the fact that the specific language in FECA would cover only 
Federal employees, while in this amendment we are covering Federal contractor 
and subcontractor employees, as well. In some instances, we modified 
provisions in FECA to address known problems in its current implementation or 
to reflect current standards of administrative law. One example of this is a 
decision not to incorporate section 8128(b) of title 5, United States Code, 
into this amendment. That section absolutely precludes judicial review of 
decisions concerning a claim by the Department of Labor. Since such decisions 
involve the substantive rights of individuals being conferred by this 
amendment, and since they are made through an informal administrative 
process, it seems appropriate to the sponsors of this amendment that there be 
external review to guard against, for example, arbitrary and capricious 
conduct in processing a claim. 

The amendment also had numerous administrative provisions to ensure a fair 
process and to guard against double compensation for the same injury. 

As the sponsors were developing this amendment, we received a lot of interest 
in federal compensation for exposure to other toxic substances. This 
amendment does not provide federal compensation for chemical hazards in the 
DOE workplace, but does authorize DOE to work with States to get workers with 
adverse health effects from their exposure to these substances into State 
worker compensation programs. It also would commission a GAO study of this 
approach so that we can evaluate, in the context of a future bill, whether 
such an approach is effective. 



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councilman and vice mayor of the city of Portsmouth, who testified that while 
working in one of the buildings, he became so sick that his lungs 
`granulated.' When he went to the infirmary, they said he was `okay for 
work.' Later that day, he went to the hospital because in his words, `my face 
was peeling off.' According to Mr. Walburn, he couldn't speak, his hair 
started falling out, his lungs started `coming out' and his bowels failed to 
function for more than 6 days. When he went to get his records to file his 
worker's compensation claim, he was told that his diagnosis had been 
`changed, been altered.' 

The Department of Energy has held similar public meetings at facilities 
across the nation--these stories are not unique to the Portsmouth Gaseous 
Diffusion Plant. 

Mr. President, it is unfortunate that this amendment is necessary in the 
first place; the compensation it will provide is little consolation for the 
pain, health problems and diminished quality of life that these individuals 
have suffered. These men and women won the cold war. Now, they simply ask 
that their government acknowledge that they were made ill in the course of 
doing their job and recognize that the government must take care of them. 

Until recently, the only way many of these employees believed they would ever 
receive proper restitution for what the government has done to them is to 
file a lawsuit against the Department of Energy or its contractors. But, in 
the time that I have been involved in this issue in the Senate, the 
Department of Energy has come a long way from its decades-long stance of 
stonewalling and denial of responsibility. Today, they admit that they have 
wronged our cold war heroes. Still, we must do more. 

I believe that all those who have served our nation fighting the cold war 
have a right to know if the federal government was responsible for causing 
them illness or harm, and if so, to provide them the care and compensation 
that they need and deserve. That is the purpose of our amendment, and I am 
pleased to join with my colleagues in support of its acceptance in this bill. 


[Page: S4759]  GPO's PDF
Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise as a cosponsor in support of the 
amendment, and thank all the sponsors for their work in this area. 

The purpose of this amendment, put simply, is to provide compensation to 
workers who have gotten sick as a result of their exposure to hazardous 
materials in the course of their efforts to build and test nuclear weapons. 
We must do right by these workers. They were instrumental in winning the cold 
war. Their efforts deterred hostile attack and safeguarded our security. 

I want to highlight a small group of those workers who toiled on a remote 
island in Alaska to test the largest underground nuclear weapons test our 
nation ever conducted. 

Amchitka is an island in the Aleutian arc 1340 miles southwest of Anchorage. 
As I mentioned, it is the site of the largest underground nuclear test in 
U.S. history--the so-called `Cannikin' test of 1971. This 5 megaton test was 
preceded by two prior tests: `Long Shot,' an 80 kiloton test in 1965; and 
`Milrow,' a 1 megaton test in 1969. 


,' they were actually classified as nuclear workers and were exposed to 
levels of ionizing radiation from non-natural and/or non-normal sources, 
above the level which at that time was permitted yearly for the general 
public, namely 500 mrem/year . . . Doses received by the men during special 
assignments and during the post-Cannikin cleanup, exceeded the permissible 
quarterly dose of 1250 mrem and the maximum permissible yearly dose of 5000 
mrem. 

I would note that the allowable exposure standards for both workers and the 
general public are much lower today. 

The actual amount of radiation the Amchitka workers were exposed to is 
difficult to quantify, Mr. President. These workers generally did not have 
the protection of radiation safety training or instruction in the proper 
usage of Thermoluminescent Dosimeters (TLDs). To make matters even worse, 
exposure records were not kept in many cases by the AEC. Some of the records 
that were kept by AEC were later lost. While this was not unusual in the very 
early years of the nuclear age, radiation protection formalities were well 
established by the late 1960s and 1970s at the time of the Amchitka tests. 
Yet the proper procedures were not followed and the proper records were not 
kept. 

So although these were some likely exposures, the records that could help 
these workers make a claim under existing authority do not exist through no 
fault of their own. That is the reason that Amchitka workers are included in 
the `Special Exposure Cohort' with the workers at the Gaseous Diffusion 
Plants in Portsmouth, Ohio; Paducah, Kentucky; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. If a 
member of the special exposure cohort gets a specified disease listed in the 
amendment that is known to be associated with ionizing radiation, her or she 
is entitled to appropriate compensation. 

I appreciate the work of Senator Thompson and others, and the consideration 
given us by the floor managers. 

Mr. President, I yield the floor. 
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