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Harold Copeland took an engineering job at the Hanford nuclear reservation in 1947, swayed by a recruiter's pitch that he would be paid a good wage and could live in a house with his wife in the government-owned town of Richland. He took the job and the house rented for $38 a month, which also included power, water, grass seed and handymen to change the light bulbs.

Harold Copeland took an engineering job at the Hanford nuclear reservation in 1947, swayed by a recruiter's pitch that he would be paid a good wage and could live in a house with his wife in the government-owned town of Richland. He took the job and the house rented for $38 a month, which also included power, water, grass seed and handymen to change the light bulbs.

"Bill Wilcox is not eating his sandwich. Bow-tied and bespectacled, he's the most dapper man in the room. Waiters come and go, the tinkle of iced teas being refilled adding a musicality to the lunchtime noise at the Flatwater Grill perched at the edge of Melton Lake. Wilcox, 87, squints down at the chicken salad on white toast, but what swims before his eyes is a city of mud, a city erected almost overnight. A secret city. In the summer of 1939, Albert Einstein penned a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was crucial, he said, to be the first to make use of a new discovery: If you bombard uranium with particles, the nucleus splits and creates a huge amount of energy. Einstein and his fellow physicists were persuasive. Things got going fast."

Daniel Skeen, a former security guard and SWAT team member at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and he said he believes the cancer resulted from his exposure to hazardous materials while working at the Oak Ridge facility "We crawled through buildings, up on roofs, we went everywhere," Skeen said.

An extensive federal report released in November concludes that roughly one in four of the 697,000 U.S. veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness. Advertisement GWI is a condition now identified as the likely consequence of exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides and a drug administered by the military to protect troops against nerve gas. The 452-page report states that "scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans." The report, compiled by a panel of scientific experts and veterans serving on the congressionally mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, fails to identify any cure for the malady. It also notes that few veterans afflicted with GWI have recovered over time.

The Act--Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA) * Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005--EEOICPA Reform Sections this document in PDF PDF 924 KB (38 pages) * The Act--Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA), as Amended this document in PDF PDF 202 KB (35 pages) * Executive Order 13179

As of Sept. 30, 2008, the total assets in the BJC pension fund for grandfathered employees were $219 million, according to info provided by Bechtel Jacobs. "The pension plan is not fully funded at this time," Bechtel Jacobs said, but declined to put a percentage on it. Company spokesman Dennis Hill said the company was meeting its requirements. "For a multi-employer plan, the funding regulations require a minimum funding level of 80%," BJC said in a statement. "As required under federal law, all multi-employer plans must provide an annual funding notice to the participants of the pension plant, which will be done in the next few weeks." There are 2,114 participants or beneficiaries covered by the plan

Whistleblowers have the potential to right a lot of wrongs, but if no one protects them against backlashes they are likely to repress the urge to speak up. That is why most workplaces have adopted policies that protect whistleblowers from reprisals, such as harassment or entries in their personnel files that could harm their careers.

Military whistle-blowers might want to save their breath. The Pentagon inspector general, the internal watchdog for the Defense Department, hardly ever sides with service members who complain that they were punished for reporting wrongdoing, according to a review of cases by The Associated Press. The inspector general's office rejected claims of retaliation and stood by the military in more than 90 percent of nearly 3,000 cases during the past six years. More than 73 percent were closed after only a preliminary review that relied on available documents and sources - often from the military itself - to determine whether a full inquiry was warranted.

West Valley Demonstration Project employees and former employees have been comparing notes as they help each other obtain cash settlements under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990. What they have learned is unsettling. Most of the 15 members of the organization, dubbed the West Valley Nuclear Compensation Group, who met Friday in Concord Town Hall for only the second time, have either been treated for cancer, have recently been diagnosed with it or have lost a spouse to the disease.

Sir Isaac Newton often has been quoted as stating in paraphrase, "The scientific achievements credited to me are based on standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before me." We can extend this thought to the many atomic veterans employed at the Piketon uranium enrichment plant from the 1950s to the present.

Sister Pat Mahoney, who went to prison for battling Rocky Flats and spent her life fighting for the homeless and against war and nuclear arms, died July 30 at San Francisco General Hospital. She had collapsed on the street about 10 blocks from her home on July 29, said her brother, Jerry Mahoney, of Petaluma, Calif. She died about 24 hours later, he said, adding that he believes Mahoney, who was 72, had a stroke.

TULLYTOWN, Pa. - Borough leaders want "Trash Mountain" to grow green, not glow green. Thats why they're fighting a plan to bring radioactive sludge to the Tullytown Landfill.

The Rocky Mountain News responds to Department of Labor letters sent to Congressmen Mark Udall and Ed Perlmutter of Colorado and Tom Udall of New Mexico. The congressmen initially wrote to labor officials about the department's failure to respond to the Rocky's Deadly Denial series.

Ward Plummer, a distinguished scientist with joint appointments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, said Thursday that ORNL has eliminated his lab position - effective June 30. "ORNL terminated me," Plummer said. "I got terminated without a review."

Hanford is one of the two Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites with employee benefits more than 5 percent higher than comparable organizations, according to the Government Accountability Office. It issued a report last week to Congress providing information on DOE's management of costs and liabilities for pensions and post-retirement benefits for which it must reimburse DOE contractors. DOE is concerned about future costs for pensions and benefits for retirees, such as health care and life insurance, and congressional leaders find budgeting for fluctuating amounts difficult each year.

Gerald Hasenkamp was in excruciating pain. Cancer had invaded his colon, his mouth, his lungs and finally his bones. When his wife, Dee, tried to prop him up in bed, his collarbone snapped. When a nurse tried to take a blood sample, his arm broke. Finally, the doctors told Dee Hasenkamp that she had to tell her husband to let go. His fight was over.

Janine Anderson spent seven years as a secretary at the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation, one of the nation's premier nuclear weapons development and production complexes. But that safe-sounding office position didn't protect her from the toxic exposure that has ravaged her body. Her lungs are scarred with deadly beryllium, a key ingredient in atomic bombs. Her immune system is attacking her body, which harbors an array of heavy metals in toxic quantities. Her liver is so enlarged that it is threatening to burst through her abdominal wall.