Findings and purpose

(a)

Findings

The Congress finds the following: (1) The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 7384 et seq.) (hereinafter in this section referred to as the Act) was enacted to ensure fairness and equity for the civilian men and women who, during the past 50 years, performed duties uniquely related to the nuclear weapons production and testing programs of the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies by establishing a program that would provide efficient, uniform, and adequate compensation for beryllium-related health conditions and radiation-related health conditions. (2) The Act provides a process for consideration of claims for compensation by individuals who were employed at relevant times at various locations, but also included provisions designating employees at certain other locations as members of a special exposure cohort whose claims are subject to a less-detailed administrative process. (3) The Act also authorizes the President, upon recommendation of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, to designate additional classes of employees at Department of Energy facilities as members of the special exposure cohort if the President determines that— (A) it is not feasible to estimate with sufficient accuracy the radiation dose that the class received; and (B) there is a reasonable likelihood that the radiation dose may have endangered the health of members of the class. (4) It has become evident that it is not feasible to estimate with sufficient accuracy the radiation dose received by employees at the Department of Energy facility in Colorado known as the Rocky Flats site for the following reasons: (A) Many worker exposures were unmonitored over the lifetime of the plant at the Rocky Flats site. Even in 2004, a former worker from the 1950s was monitored under the former radiation worker program of the Department of Energy and found to have a significant internal deposition that had been undetected and unrecorded for more than 50 years. (B) No lung counter for detecting and measuring plutonium and americium in the lungs existed at Rocky Flats until the late 1960s. Without this equipment, the very insoluble oxide forms of plutonium cannot be detected, and a large number of workers had inhalation exposures that went undetected and unmeasured. (C) Exposure to neutron radiation was not monitored until the late 1950s, and most of those measurements through 1970 have been found to be in error. In some areas of the plant the neutron doses were as much as 2 to 10 times as great as the gamma doses received by workers, but only gamma doses were recorded. The old neutron films are being re-read, but those doses have not yet been added to the workers’ records or been used in the dose reconstructions for Rocky Flats workers carried out by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (D) Radiation exposures for many workers were not measured or were missing and, as a result, the records are incomplete or estimated doses were assigned. There are many inaccuracies in the exposure records that the Institute is using to determine whether Rocky Flats workers qualify for compensation under the Act. (E) The model that has been used for dose reconstruction by the Institute in determining whether Rocky Flats workers qualify for compensation under the Act may be in error. The default values used for particle size and solubility of the internally deposited plutonium in workers are subject to reasonable scientific debate. Use of erroneous values could substantially underestimate the actual internal doses for claimants. (5) Some Rocky Flats workers, despite having worked with tons of plutonium and having known exposures leading to serious health effects, have been denied compensation under the Act as a result of potentially flawed calculations based on records that are incomplete or in error as well as the use of potentially flawed models. (6) Achieving the purposes of the Act with respect to workers at Rocky Flats is more likely to be achieved if claims by those workers are subject to the administrative procedures applicable to members of the special exposure cohort. (b)

Purpose

The purpose of this Act is to revise the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act so as to include certain past and present Rocky Flats workers as members of the special exposure cohort.