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The Department of Energy will make the medical records of former Los Alamos National Laboratory workers available to help them prove whether they qualify for federal compensation for exposure to radiation and beryllium. Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Sen.-elect Tom Udall, both New Mexico Democrats, welcome the DOE's announcement Thursday of its decision to provide the records available to lab employees. The medical records are from the Los Alamos Medical Center and were created before the facility was privatized in 1964.

The federal government should take steps to make a program for ill nuclear workers easier to understand and to contact more workers or their survivors who might be eligible for compensation, said an annual report to Congress. A large percentage of the people who contact the Office of the Ombudsman for Part E of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program "simply want assistance processing their claim," said the office in its recently released report on 2008. Others have complaints about the limits placed on benefits to survivors if the worker has died, their treatment by the office that administers the program or about diseases they believe have been incorrectly excluded from the program. Part E of the program offers workers at Hanford and other nuclear sites up to $250,000 for wage loss and impairment caused by exposure to toxic substances, which could include radiation, chemicals, solvents, acids and metals.