Sick nuke workers call for immediate changes to federal program

Advocates for sick nuclear workers called for immediate oversight of the Department of Labor program that compensates them for work-related illnesses, in response to a Government Accountability Office report released last week which made the same recommendation.

Ames Laboratory, a research facility of the U.S. Department of Energy that is run by Iowa State University (photo courtesy of DOE). A little more than a third of claims filed by Ames Lab workers have resulted in payment.

The Alliance of Nuclear Workers Advocacy Groups (ANWAG) said it fully supports the GAO’s recommendation to provide external oversight to the Energy Employee’s Occupational Illness Compensation Act (EEOICPA).

“The GAO’s call for scientific oversight…is no small matter. It challenges the current program leadership’s understanding of the complexity of the issues and highlights their unwillingness to assure the scientific integrity of the decision. GAO’s recommendations support ANWAG’s contention that program decisions are often arbitrary and capricious, and without scientific basis.” said the group in a response statement last week.

Signed into law in 2000, the EEOICPA was designed to compensate former government nuclear workers with lump sum payments and medical benefits for illnesses linked to their exposures to radiation and toxic substances.

But as The Iowa Independent reported previously, the program has instead created such layers of bureaucracy and claim denials that it has become the target of criticism not only from former nuclear workers struggling to get compensation for their dangerous work history, but from advocacy groups, medical experts and even the senators who authored the original legislation.

Terrie Barrie is a co-founder of ANWAG. She has been an advocate for sick nuclear workers since her husband, a former employee at the Rocky Flats nuclear facility near Denver, Colo., became ill and was refused compensation through the program.

“We were pleasantly surprised that the GAO recommended independent oversight, and we are going to push for that sooner rather than later,” she said.

Not everything met with ANWAG’s approval. Administrative costs, which account for up to a fifth of total program costs, are too high, Barrie said.

“The complexity of the scientific process used… should not provide [The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] with a pass. [It] must consider the burden placed on sickened workers that were systematically lied to about radiation exposure when reconciling the proper limits of science within a reparations program,” said a statement released by ANWAG.

The 14 to 20 percent administrations costs for the program are simply too much, Barrie said, and paired with the amount of time taken to process claims — which can typically take up to 3 years — it is unfair to workers seeking medical benefits under the plan. She called for the government to make Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) status the standard. SEC currently provides blanket coverage for people who worked at certain sites for certain periods of time.

“This is not a scientific debate, these are people’s lives. They keep arguing methodology, but I think it’s time to say enough is enough and grant SEC status to every nuclear site,” Barrie said.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who was one of several lawmakers who originally requested the GAO investigation, said in a statement last week he would be taking a closer look at the GAO recommendations and discussing ways to implement them. A bill that many feel would fix the program is currently stuck in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is led by Harkin.