NYTimes.com Article: Uranium Plant Enriches Kentucky City, but at the Cost of Health

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Uranium Plant Enriches Kentucky City, but at the Cost of Health



October 26, 2002

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 









 



PADUCAH, Ky., Oct. 25 - A half-century ago, Western

Kentucky was so thrilled about the opening of a cold war

uranium enrichment plant that it named a community Cimota -

"atomic" spelled backward. 



Decades later, angry, scared and dying workers file into

the Sick Workers Office in Paducah, pulling oxygen tanks

and fighting incurable tumors. 



As they marked the 50th anniversary this week of the

opening of the enrichment plant, the Paducah Gaseous

Diffusion Plant, residents of this city pondered a mixed

legacy: The plant turned the city into a pocket of wealth

in a poor region, but at a cost. 



Workers were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and

scores slowly became sick with diseases that the federal

government only recently admitted responsibility for. 



"People come in here very sick," said Stewart Tolar, site

manager at the Energy Employees Compensation Resource

Center. "They feel like they've lost their dignity." 



In 1999, then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson issued an

apology in Paducah after the government reversed decades of

denial and conceded that many workers did get sick because

of exposure to cancer-causing radiation and silica or

beryllium, which can cause lung diseases. 



An entitlement law later provided lifetime medical care and

a tax-free lump sum of $150,000 to those made sick by their

work. 



Since the program began last year, about $62.8 million has

been distributed to former and current workers and their

survivors through the resource office in Paducah, Mr. Tolar

said. 



But recognition came too late for many. One former worker,

Joe Harding, was denied compensation even though his bones

contained 34,000 times the expected concentration of

uranium before he died in 1980. 



In addition to the health disaster, the Energy Department

estimated it would take 10 years and $1.3 billion more than

the $400 million already spent to clean up environmental

contamination. 



Even so, many former workers say that seeing their city get

rich while doing what many considered their patriotic duty

during the cold war, making weapons-grade uranium for

warheads, made it all worthwhile. 



"It's been a good salary and it's got good benefits," said

Rodney Cook 53, a shift superintendent who had part of a

lung removed in March because of exposure to asbestos he

believed he received in his 27 years at the plant. "I don't

blame anybody for it. It was just part of the job." 



With the increase in demand for engineers and scientist at

the plant, the middle and upper classes expanded in what

had primarily been an Ohio River and railroad town. 



To this day, the Paducah plant is Western Kentucky's

biggest private employer - with more than 1,700 workers -

and one of the largest employers in the state. 



After the United States Enrichment Corporation suspended

operations at a sister uranium plant in Piketon, Ohio, last

year, Paducah became the only place in the nation where

uranium is enriched for the commercial nuclear industry. 



The Energy Department initially thought 3,000 to 4,000

people nationwide might be eligible for compensation for

nuclear-weapons-related work during the cold war, but the

accuracy of that estimate is unclear, in part because of

poor record keeping. 



Despite all that, Paducah, population 27,000, is now in a

competition to attract a new uranium enrichment plant using

safer and more efficient centrifuge technology.



http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/26/national/26PADU.html?ex=1036646069&ei=1&en=610d3c827e701638







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