Contamination Checks at Nuke Plants

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Perhaps it's time to send Richardson back to the U.N., and take him 
away from all of these "dangerous" radiation potentials.

Tuesday August 10 7:59 AM ET 

Contamination Checks at Nuke Plants

WASHINGTON (AP) - Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said today the 
government is looking into whether workers at federal nuclear 
facilities, in addition to one in Paducah, Ky., may have been exposed 
to dangerous radiation.  

``We're looking at other plants, at Oak Ridge (Tenn.), to see whether 
this might have happened,'' Richardson said in an interview on NBC's 
``Today.''  

``We believe right now that the situation needs a full airing, that 
Congress needs to look into it,'' Richardson said.

Workers at the Energy Department uranium-enrichment plant in Paducah 
will be subjects of a medical review following charges that thousands 
of employees were unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly 
radioactive metals.  

Richardson ordered the study after a newspaper reported that the 
Paducah case differed from other nuclear contamination incidents 
because workers there did not know they were handling plutonium. 
Instead, they thought they were dealing only with much less-potent 
uranium, which they were enriching for commercial nuclear fuel.  

``It's inexcusable if the government concealed information, along 
with the contractors, that in the '50s and '60s and '70s these 
workers might have been exposed to plutonium,'' Richardson said. ``If 
that is the case ... and we are investigating, these individuals need 
to be treated and compensated, the government has to apologize.'' 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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