Press release 5 February 2020

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As U.S. ramps up nuclear production (again), the human toll of past work continues to mount, including at LANL

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 or 505-577-8563 cell

Albuquerque and Santa Fe -- The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) went into effect in 2001, compensating and providing medical care for sick and dead U.S. nuclear weapons workers. In light of the enormous current pressure to establish industrial plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Savannah River Site (SRS), it is useful to review some recent data on EEOICPA claims, which represent just part of the human cost of the (ongoing) Cold War.

Nationwide data on EEOICPA claims was obtained and analyzed in 2015 in the important McClatchy “Irradiated” series [if main link doesn’t work see the articles and selected background materials on this page.] McClatchy found that as of 2015, at least 33,480 nuclear workers who had received EEOICPA compensation had died. Of these the Department of Labor (DOL) has acknowledged that radiation or other toxins contributed to the deaths of 15,809 (video at 7:25). McClatchy’s analysis found that less than half of those who had applied for compensation were successful.

Additional data and individual case stories on LANL worker safety and health were provided in the 2018 ProPublica/Santa Fe New Mexican “Half Life” series. FOIA documents revealed, for example, that 1,400 claims for radiation-related illness had been filed by LANL workers and an additional 335 deceased workers had radiation-related claims filed on their behalf.

Since 2001, 317,209 EEOICPA claims have been filed, with 123,798 claims paid, representing 126,361 unique individual nuclear workers. As of December 31, 2019 DOL reports overall spending for all EEOICPA compensation, plus medical bills paid, was $17,515,274,729. That’s an average of $973 million a year settled towards nuclear work-related illness and death, with survivor benefits included.

LANL-specific payout has already reached $1,024,151,636, almost six percent of overall EEOICPA program costs.

There have been 11,586 total compensated LANL cases and claims paid over the past 18 years, representing 6,418 unique individual workers. For comparison, the current LANL workforce is 11,738 employees

Documents obtained by McClatchy via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and supplied to Ms. Deb Jerison, founder of the Energy Employees Claimant Assistance Project (EECAP) -- and provided by Ms. Jerison to the Los Alamos Study Group -- reveal that there have been 1,599 unique deceased LANL worker claims paid to survivors.

Ms. Jerison emphasized the difficulty acquiring updated “unique deceased workers” data from DOL. Jerison explains: “

McClatchy's spreadsheet shows that DOL paid claims for 1,599 deceased workers at LANL from the inception of EEOICPA through mid-July 2015.  On June 6, 2018 EECAP filed a FOIA to update the data contained in the McClatchy FOIA through that date.  This FOIA request was denied by DOL..”

If the number of unique worker death settlements has grown since 2015 in proportion to the number of settled LANL cases overall, the number of unique deceased LANL workers whose families have received compensation would be in the neighborhood of 1,883.

An actuarial estimate of EEOICPA liabilities prepared by Gross Consulting for DOL’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs predicts that over the 2020-2079 time period the discounted annual payments for estimated EEOICPA liabilities will eventually drop, but nonetheless reach an estimated total future discounted payout of $27 billion. By 2030, the discounted annual estimated EEOICPA payout will fall below the billion-dollar mark for the first time in many years. That happens to be the year by which plutonium pit producing facilities at LANL and SRS are required to begin producing at least 80 pits per year, which hopefully will not expose a whole new generation of nuclear workers to the same deadly dangers which eventually gave rise to EEOICPA.

***ENDS***