Feds may compensate Sandia workers

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 27, 2006 | by Michael Doyle, FRESNO BEE

WASHINGTON -- Some ailing San Joaquin Valley residents who have worked at a top-secret Livermore facility might receive $150,000 payments.

First, though, the X-ray technicians and scientists from Sandia National Laboratories need a green light from federal officials. If they get it, they will become the first batch of Californians deemed eligible for a special compensation program born from politics and pain.

Last week, the Sandia workers moved an important step closer to their goal.

Bush administration officials announced they would consider a Sandia petition for assistance. The petition covers a relative handful of employees who had worked in three particular rooms at the Sandia site, next to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"Radiation exposures were inevitable and pretty much an everyday occurrence," one Sandia worker reported on the petition.

The workers, whose names are blacked out, added that "years of exposure and dose records are apparently missing."

This complicates efforts to prove exposure to cancer-causing radiation. Only a few workers from Sandia's X-Ray Diffraction and Fluorescence Laboratory are on the petition, though their efforts could have broader consequences if successful.

Government-owned, but managed by corporate giant Lockheed Martin, Sandia helps turn Lawrence Livermore research into nuclear weapons. Currently, Sandia employs some 900 workers.

A Sandia spokeswoman said the company will assist the employees.

"Sandia cooperates fully when we receive requests for employment and medical records of former employees who make claims under this program," spokeswoman Jennifer Hallstrom said.

As with the larger Lawrence Livermore lab, most Sandia workers have historically lived in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties.

Their work has boosted the nation's nuclear defense. Sometimes, it also has been dangerous.

"They did what their country asked of them," Republican Rep. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina -- who is now a senator -- said of nuclear weapons workers during congressional debate in 2001. "Unfortunately, the government was not always aware or up front about what they were being exposed to and the dangers it presented to their health."

Prompted by horror stories from other facilities, Congress began a special compensation program in 2001. It provides lump-sum $150,000 payments and covers medical expenses for nuclear-complex workers who developed radiation-induced cancer.

Several types of workers can seek help.

Energy Department employees who have cancer determined to be "at least as likely as not" caused by their work exposure can get aid. This is not a sure thing.

A total of 4,680 claims have been filed in California. Of these, 472 claims have been paid, $38.2 million.

The California claims include 123 for Lawrence Livermore workers, three paid to Stanford Linear Accelerator Center staffers and two paid to Sandia workers. Most applicants fail.

The 123 Lawrence Livermore petitions granted, for instance, are a small fraction of the 2,011 petitions filed by lab workers.

Alternatively, the petition allows workers to seek assistance as a "special exposure cohort." Once recognized, these groups of workers have an easier burden of proof. If they have radiation- based cancer, it is automatically attributed to their work exposure.

It will take six months or more for a decision.

"It depends on the complexity of the site and the complexity of the (radiation) exposures," said Larry Elliot, director of the Office of Compensation Analysis and Support.