Abstract
The struggle continues
I agree with Arjun Makhijani (“The Burden of Proof,” July/August Bulletin) that recent legislation providing health care and compensation for workers suffering from radiation-related illness as a consequence of their employment in the nuclear weapons industry is extremely important, if long overdue. I also agree with the implication in his article that for very many of these workers the burden of proving the legitimacy of their claims is close to impossible. As a veteran of Operation Crossroads I also appreciate his mention of the atomic veterans' long struggle for official recognition of our problems. But I fear that his mention of laws containing “guidelines to prevent arbitrary and summary rejection of claims by atomic veterans” might be interpreted by many as an indication that this struggle has been successfully concluded. Unfortunately, the legislation notwithstanding, the majority of atomic veterans have encountered a burden of proof so onerous that only a very small proportion of claims have been allowed.
National Association of Radiation Survivors, St. Louis, Missouri
New bomb pits? You betcha
In his article “The New-Nuke Chorus Tunes Up” (July/August Bulletin), Stephen Schwartz cites a Nuclear Watch of New Mexico paper on weapons modifications and possible new designs (available at www.nukewatch.org), as well as a personal communication with me as the sources for budget information on the Energy Department's planned “modern pit facility.” The Energy Department's budget request for next year includes $4 million in funding for the conceptual design alone.
I would like to provide some updated information. Supplemental funding in July added another $4 million to the $2 million for this project for this year. And there is, of course, little to prevent Congress from supplementing next year's request as well. Also in July, the Senate passed the fiscal 2002 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici managed to add another $109 million to the Bush administration's request for $217.7 million for Los Alamos National Laboratory's plutonium pit production “campaign” (the Bush request itself reflected a 50 percent increase). The new pit facility would no doubt be a major beneficiary of the increase, which may well be included in the bill that comes out of the House-Senate conference.
Prominent officials in the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) are now explicitly calling the Los Alamos pit production capability an “interim R&D” effort and “not the final answer.” The NNSA's final answer is clearly the $4 billion modern pit facility, most likely to be located at the Savannah River Site. Energy anticipates issuing a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact study for the facility sometime next year. In short, it is moving right along.
As Schwartz noted, Los Alamos now declares that the aim of its plutonium pit production campaign is to be able to manufacture both existing and new-design pits without underground testing. According to Energy's 1997 report, Rapid Reconstitution of Pit Production Study, the modern pit facility will be able to produce as many as 500 pits per year, nearly half the peak Cold War rate. (Against whom will these new pits ultimately be targeted? Osama bin Laden?)
The rapid pace of activity on the modern pit facility demonstrates concretely that the United States is not only seeking to circumvent the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty's intent to cut off the continuing advancement of nuclear weapons, but also that it has no genuine interest in nuclear disarmament as mandated by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which, in 2000, it re-pledged its “unequivocal commitment.”
Nuclear Watch of New Mexico
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Nuclear-Free Future Awards
The fourth annual Nuclear-free Future Awards ceremony was held this September in Carnsore Point, Ireland, as part of a nine-day festival celebrating a nuclear-free Ireland. The awards program was started in 1998 by German author and environmentalist Claus Biegert.
Three Nuclear-Free Future Awards, with endowments of 10,000 euros each, were given in 2001:
• Kevin Buzzacott received the Resistance Award for his ongoing anti-nuclear activism in Australia.
• For his efforts to document the impact of the nuclear industry, photographer Kenji Higuchi was given the Education Award.
• Green Party parliamentary member Hans-Josef Fell of Germany was given the Solutions Award for his work to phase out nuclear power and focus instead on renewable resources.
Honorary awards went to Solange Fernex of France for lifetime achievement and to David Lowry of Britain in special recognition.
Peru, Illinois
Updates
Singing off the right sheet
In the July/August 2001 Bulletin, union lobbyist Richard Miller described new Labor Secretary Elaine Chao's failed attempt to pass along responsibility for a compensation program approved last year for sick nuclear weapons workers to another agency. The program, Miller told author Michael Flynn (“A Debt Long Overdue”), “was an attempt to remedy the betrayal of an entire work force that faced systematized lies and systematized cover-ups and systematized litigation regardless of merit–and then along comes [Chao] who says, Oh we don't want any part of this.’”
On August 10, Chao presented Clara Harding with a $150,000 check, making Harding the first compensation recipient under the new program. Harding's husband, Joe, died in 1980 as a result of ailments he contracted while working at the government's uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky.
At the presentation, Chao said: “There is no more poignant example of how people can transform their trials into triumphs than the tender story of Joe and Clara Harding.”
According to Labor officials, since July 31, the day the program officially began, some 10,000 people have applied for benefits and about 180 have received compensation (Associated Press, October 3).
Other developments: In early October, as part of the Defense Authorization bill, the Senate passed legislation relaxing the criteria for determining eligibility for those suffering from silicosis. According to Robert Alvarez, (“Making it Work,” July/August 2001), the program's initial, limited definition of silicosis, which covered “only the most severe and terminal cases,” had been slipped into the legislation at the last moment by industry officials. The Senate also wants Labor to eliminate a rule that restricts compensation for surviving children to those who were under 18 at the time of their parent's death.