Records May be Exhumed from  Nuclear Waste Burial

DAYTON, Ohio - Records buried in a landfill used for radioactive waste may be dug up to determine whether cancer-stricken workers from a defunct nuclear-weapons plant qualify for compensation, a federal official said.

At least a dozen pallets of cardboard boxes, six 55-gallon drums and 11 safes containing classified records from the Mound weapons plant in Miamisburg, Ohio, were buried in underground shafts of the landfill at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in 2005.

Nobody knows the condition of the records, and the U.S. Department of Energy says it could take up to 18 months and cost as much as $9 million to unearth and decontaminate them.

Larry Elliott, the director of compensation analysis for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said the records could help officials get a clear picture of the hazards workers faced at the weapons plant.

"We are open-minded as to whether (the records) should be exhumed," Elliott said. "This is an interesting problem, and we're doing the best we can to make sure that we have the documents we need to do our work."

Elliott's office oversees a method of estimating workers' exposure to harmful radiation and chemicals. If the probability is at least 50 percent that a worker's cancer was caused by on-the-job exposure, the worker qualifies for federal cash and medical benefits.

Elliott said he will know within weeks whether it will be necessary to exhume the records.

Department of Energy spokeswoman Megan Barnett said Wednesday that the agency was looking for related material, including possible duplicates to the records.

Mound began making triggers and detonators for nuclear weapons in 1949 and employed more than 2,000 workers at its peak. The Department of Energy ended production at the plant in 1996.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.



Get this T-Shirt Design. Just click the picture to go to the Vox Populi Nebraska
Corner Store and see all the specialized merchandise.

Available in Baseball Jersey also.  Blue or red.