compensation program

US govt won’t compensate Santa Susanna Field Laboratory workers exposed to radiation

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Some experts say SSFL was the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history.

BY FRANK MATT
fmatt@mcclatchydc.com
April 18,2016

Highlights:

Department of Energy says only Santa Susana workers in Area IV could be exposed to radiation

But former nuclear workers say the system wasn’t so tidy and that they deserve medical compensation

Tales of sodium reactor waste dump, radioactive mist

WASHINGTON

Lorraine Kurowski never knew many details about her husband Dan’s job at a secretive, sprawling facility on a hilltop far north of Los Angeles. “We need the money and we’ll have a good retirement,” she remembers him saying, “but when I die, turn the lights off and watch me glow.”

That line – “watch me glow” – became a running joke about his job, but today Lorraine wishes she had taken it as a warning.

Dan, known by his coworkers as “Big Dan,” worked from 1964 until 1997 as a radioactive waste packer at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a sprawling facility where some of the nation’s top

scientists contracted by NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission once worked together to advance the fields of space exploration, weaponry and nuclear power at the height of the cold war.

And when he found himself dying years later of pancreatic cancer, Dan sought compensation from a government program meant to help former workers who had been exposed to radiation and toxic substances at nuclear technology sites.

Dan Kurowski was denied, becoming one of hundreds of Santa Susana workers refused compensation for a variety of illnesses potentially associated with radiation and toxic chemical exposure. That’s because those workers – many of them NASA contractors – were unable to prove that they were ever in the small sliver of the site known as Area IV.

The Department of Energy, the Department of Labor and the Boeing company – the site’s current corporate owner – all say Area IV is the only portion of the site where the Department of Energy operated.

Yet for all its denied claims, Santa Susana is one of the reasons the compensation program for former nuclear workers exists in the first place. In 1999, an independent study of illnesses in the communities surrounding the site were one of several presented to the White House and Congress as evidence of the need for a compensation program.

And therefore, the Labor Department insists, it can compensate only a subset of sick former Santa Susana workers.Members of the Santa Susana workforce were among those in a McClatchy report in December who tracked how the federal government has treated its nuclear workers. More than 107,000 nuclear workers nationally have applied for benefits through a Department of Labor compensation program since 2001. The payments go to workers, or their surviving family members, who might have been exposed to radiation or other toxic hazards from their jobs at Department of Energy nuclear facilities.

Nationwide, almost half of claimants who apply to the program receive benefits. At Santa Susana, less than a third of the over 1,400 claims filed have resulted in compensation, according to data reviewed by McClatchy.

Yet for all its denied claims, Santa Susana is one of the reasons the compensation program for former nuclear workers exists in the first place. In 1999, an independent study of illnesses in the communities surrounding the site were one of several presented to the White House and Congress as evidence of the need for a compensation program.

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Nuclear Nightmare: “Safe Side of the Fence” screens in Idaho

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From the Boise Weekly

April 25, 7 p.m., presented by Snake River Alliance

By

The Safe Side of the Fence screens Monday, April 25, 7 p.m., at The Flicks

Courtesy of the film “Safe Side of the Fence”

The Safe Side of the Fence screens Monday, April 25, 7 p.m., at The Flicks

Since 2000, more than 3,500 workers at Idaho nuclear facilities have been paid over $250 million in compensation through the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. Nationwide, those numbers are much higher, but may be a fraction of the nuclear program’s true costs to America’s “Cold War vets.” In many cases, illnesses or injuries were suffered on account of poor workplace safety and failure to properly inform workers of the risks of handling radioactive materials.

“I don’t think we can be overly complacent because we’re still having exposures,” said Snake River Alliance Nuclear Program Director Beatrice Brailsford. “We are much more able to provide protection than we used to, but … any mistake can have serious consequences.”

As recently as April 17, reports of a sizeable leak in a nuclear waste storage tank at the Hanford Site on the Columbia River caused emergency crews to respond to what some described as a “catastrophic” incident.

When the United States nuclear program was in its infancy in the 1940s and ’50s, problems of workplace safety and treatment of laborers were more acute. This is evident at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis, Mo.­–one of the first uranium refineries in the world and the subject of The Safe Side of the Fence.

“Those workers were some of the most contaminated workers in history,” said director Tony West, who will travel to Boise as a guest of the Snake River Alliance for the film’s screening at The Flicks.

The Mallinckrodt workers refined uranium used at the University of Chicago Pile-1 and the Manhattan Project. Later, the West Lake Landfill, where waste was illegally deposited, became a Superfund site. Its workers suffer disproportionately from contamination-related illnesses.

The compensation program itself is 16 years old, but only a few of the people who worked at the plant have received money through it. West made the plant’s lasting impact on St. Louis and learning why compensation has been elusive for its workers the thrust of his documentary.

“The story’s about these workers, but it’s also about waste,” he said.

http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/nuclear-nightmare-safe-side-of-the-fence-screens-at-the-flicks/Content?oid=3770766

[Editor: This is where the jobs were during the Depression. In addition, there was lots of flag-waving. It was considered unpatriotic to question. People believe what they want to believe, especially if it pays the bills and puts food on the table.]