Some $800M paid to SRS workers for Cold War radiation exposure

More than 8,000 current or former workers of the Department of Energy nuclear site in Aiken have received at least $800 million in federal compensation and paid medical expenses for job-related illnesses, Labor Department data show.

The payments under a little-noticed federal program represent a fraction of the staggering nationwide toll of a nuclear weapons industry born out of the Cold War: More than 104,000 sick workers have received almost $11 billion in compensation and medical expenses.

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program was created in October 2000 to identify workers who grew ill after being unknowingly exposed to hazardous materials at nuclear plants during the Cold War, like the then-named Savannah River Plant of Aiken.

Many former workers of the Savannah River Plant who are sick from, or have died from, diseases like cancer, beryllium disease, silicosis, asbestosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are eligible for compensation or medical expenses. In the case of a worker’s death, their survivors can file a claim.

“Not until the act was actually in the works back in the late ’90s did they finally realize that there was a lot of exposures at these particular Department of Energy sites,” said Rachel Leiton, director of the program. “And that’s why they created the act.”

A 2007 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study of more than 18,000 workers hired between 1950 and 1986 found that more male Savannah River Site workers died from illnesses like pleural cancer and leukemia than expected based on national averages.

But to get up to $400,000 in lump sum payments, and potentially unlimited additional financial assistance for medical bills related to their conditions, workers and their families have to wade through a series of complicated laws to determine whether their cancer or other illnesses were caused by their work, and if they can prove it.

Some workers’ wives were not allowed to know what their husbands were doing during the Cold War, making determining exact job responsibilities, and subsequent exposure, difficult. Many workers themselves still don’t know what they were exposed to during their tenure at the plant.

Workers can be accepted to the program through two types of claims: Part B, enacted in 2000, and Part E, enacted in 2004. A worker can qualify for one or the other, or both.

In the month of October, 11 Part B claims, and 14 Part E claims from the Savannah River Site were paid, according to a data from the Energy Employees Claimant Assistance Project, a nonprofit.

Finding proof for claims, experts say, can be more difficult than one would expect.

Because the program is still fairly new, many people are finding out they can file for compensation years after the worker’s employment, or even death, said attorney Louise Roselle, who has worked with nuclear facility workers’ cases for years.

Some people are filing claims for former workers who were exposed to radiation at the Savannah River Site almost 50 years ago. Some of those workers have died.

This can lead to issues with seemingly simple requirements, like documentation of a doctor’s diagnosis of cancer. But finding these medical records can be daunting, or impossible, when the hospital has gone out of business, or a healthcare provider opts to destroy records more than 20 years old.

On average, a little more than half of Savannah River Site claims are denied, according to McClatchy’s analysis of Office of Worker’s Compensation data up to Nov. 16.

Workers or their families are often frustrated when they are told they still do not qualify, even after learning the worker may have been exposed to toxic substances, Leiton said.

“The ones that don’t get paid, it’s hard for them to understand,” she said.

For the workers and families Roselle helps, qualifying for the program can be about more than the money.

“What’s important to these workers is that the government recognizes the sacrifices that they made to their health in working there,” she said. “I think they feel that this legislation and this money is a recognition of what they went through.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2014 at 12:00 AM.