Tennessee reaches $2B mark for sick nuclear workers

Residents of Tennessee have received payments and medical care totaling about $2.1 billion from the government's compensation program for sick nuclear workers.

Most of the claimants once worked at the nuclear facilities in Oak Ridge or are surviving family members of former workers at Y-12, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, K-25 or other sites in the Atomic City.

Tennessee is the first state to pass the $2 billion milestone. Nationwide, about $12 billion has been paid out since the Energy Employees Occupational Illness and Compensation Program Act was enacted in 2000.

That's a lot of money, but that doesn't mean that former workers or their advocates are satisfied with the program, especially those whose claims were denied.

That is why there was a push for the newly created Advisory Board on Toxic Substances and Worker Health, which will advise the Secretary of Labor on technical issues pertaining to the compensation program for those made sick by the Cold War work on nuclear weapons.

Supporters hope the board's expertise and influence will make it easier to collect from the fund and less onerous on the families of sick workers, who often have to collect a mass of documents to help prove their sickness was caused by workplace exposures to radioactive materials and hazardous chemicals.

Garry Whitley, former president of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council in Oak Ridge, has been named a board member representing the claimant community.

The advisory board's first meeting is scheduled for April 26-28 in Washington, D.C., and it will be open to the public.

Terrie Barrie of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, which pushed for formation of the new panel, hailed the announcement.

'What a great selection of highly qualified people,' Barrie said in an email message to advocates and stakeholders.

Nuclear Upkeep: If case you haven't noticed, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has received some additional work for its multiple hot cell facilities, where highly radioactive materials are handled remotely inside shielded enclosures.

Among the new projects is ORNL's central role in producing plutonium-238 for the space program. Another involves research on high-burn-up nuclear fuel from the North Anna Reactor in Virginia.

There is $26 million in the Obama administration's proposed Fiscal Year 2017 budget to be applied to the four hot-cell facilities at ORNL. That would reportedly be a big step up from the base operating budget for the lab's non-reactor nuclear facilities and would help meet the financial need for refurbishments.

But, as ORNL Deputy Lab Director Jeff Smith rightly noted, it's just a proposal at this stage of the game.

Congress will have the final say-so.

UPF Promises: March is a big time for congressional hearings, and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate Appropriation energy and water subcommittee, held one to take a close look at the budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

NNSA Administrator Frank G. Klotz was the key witness, and Alexander asked him specifically about the status of the Uranium Processing Facility — the multibillion-dollar project under development at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge.

Klotz told Alexander that the UPF team is following all of the recommendations made a couple of years ago by a 'Red Team' headed by ORNL Director Thom Mason.

He also promised that the project will be completed on schedule and within its budget.

'We are going to deliver that facility at $6.5 billion by 2025,' Klotz told Tennessee's senior senator.