NYT: Uranium Plant Enriches Kentucky City, but at the Cost of Health

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October 26, 2002

Uranium Plant Enriches Kentucky City, but at the Cost of Health

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ADUCAH, Ky., Oct. 25 — A half-century ago, Western Kentucky was so thrilled about the opening of a cold war uranium enrichment plant that it named a community Cimota — "atomic" spelled backward.

Decades later, angry, scared and dying workers file into the Sick Workers Office in Paducah, pulling oxygen tanks and fighting incurable tumors.

As they marked the 50th anniversary this week of the opening of the enrichment plant, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, residents of this city pondered a mixed legacy: The plant turned the city into a pocket of wealth in a poor region, but at a cost.

Workers were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and scores slowly became sick with diseases that the federal government only recently admitted responsibility for.

"People come in here very sick," said Tolar, site manager at the Energy Employees Compensation Resource Center. "They feel like they've lost their dignity."

In 1999, then-Energy Secretary Bill issued an apology in Paducah after the government reversed decades of denial and conceded that many workers did get sick because of exposure to cancer-causing radiation and silica or beryllium, which can cause lung diseases.

An entitlement law later provided lifetime medical care and a tax-free lump sum of $150,000 to those made sick by their work.

Since the program began last year, about $62.8 million has been distributed to former and current workers and their survivors through the resource office in Paducah, Mr. Tolar said.

But recognition came too late for many. One former worker, Joe Harding, was denied compensation even though his bones contained 34,000 times the expected concentration of uranium before he died in 1980.

In addition to the health disaster, the Energy Department estimated it would take 10 years and $1.3 billion more than the $400 million already spent to clean up environmental contamination.

Even so, many former workers say that seeing their city get rich while doing what many considered their patriotic duty during the cold war, making weapons-grade uranium for warheads, made it all worthwhile.

"It's been a good salary and it's got good benefits," said Rodney Cook 53, a shift superintendent who had part of a lung removed in March because of exposure to asbestos he believed he received in his 27 years at the plant. "I don't blame anybody for it. It was just part of the job."

With the increase in demand for engineers and scientist at the plant, the middle and upper classes expanded in what had primarily been an Ohio River and railroad town.

To this day, the Paducah plant is Western Kentucky's biggest private employer — with more than 1,700 workers — and one of the largest employers in the state.

After the United States Enrichment Corporation suspended operations at a sister uranium plant in Piketon, Ohio, last year, Paducah became the only place in the nation where uranium is enriched for the commercial nuclear industry.

The Energy Department initially thought 3,000 to 4,000 people nationwide might be eligible for compensation for nuclear-weapons-related work during the cold war, but the accuracy of that estimate is unclear, in part because of poor record keeping.

Despite all that, Paducah, population 27,000, is now in a competition to attract a new uranium enrichment plant using safer and more efficient centrifuge technology.

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[Guest guest]

This is the type of mentality (duh) that is found all over in sick

buildings. The dolts would rather lose their health or die than to

have to find another job or risk being on unemployment. I wonder if he

lost a part of his brain or if that was clogged with asbestos too.

Another sorry lemming.

Mac> " It's been a good salary and it's got good benefits, " said Rodney Cook 53,

a

Mac> shift superintendent who had part of a lung removed in March because of

Mac> exposure to asbestos he believed he received in his 27 years at the plant.

" I

Mac> don't blame anybody for it. It was just part of the job. "

Barth

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