Re: Newsarticle: Cold War's Human Costs Linger

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@ICX.NET>]

The US Government has undertaken a program to compensate nuclear

facilities workers with specific diseases.  It has given the Dept. of

Labor tens of millions of dollars to administer the program.  At Oak

Ridge alone, approximately 1200 people showed up to find out if they

were eligible for up to $150,000 each.  The only problem?  The Congress

didn't appropriate any money to pay the workers' (or their survivors')

claims.  Of course the politicians are taking credit for getting this

program in place (but refuse to put the money into it).  As it stands,

the money to pay claims will have to come out of Oak Ridge Operations

Environmental Management budget, which was already slashed $70 million

from last year (House mark).  About $10 million is the estimate for

money set aside--that will cover 80 people. FY2002 is going to be grim,

and there will be a lot of unhappy people (both sick workers and

unemployed subcontractors).



My own musings,

Susan Gawarecki



John Jacobus wrote:



> This appeared in today's Washington Post.  I was in the "Metro" section

> rather than the front section.

> (My spouse was surprised to hear the Government had run out of money.)

************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.