NARRATOR: Driving through Oak Ridge, Tennessee, it seems like a typical small town. It is anything but typical. Oak Ridge was America’s original “Secret City,” built on a 56,000 acre military reservation in 1942 around a nuclear weapons facility known as Y-12.

Today, Oak Ridge is part of America’s nuclear weapons complex that includes 16 plants in 13 states, which together built 70,000 nuclear weapons and generated 36 million cubic meters of radioactive and hazardous wastes.

During the Cold War against the Soviet Union, secrecy reigned. Until the early 1950's Oak Ridge citizens lived and worked behind a barbed wire fence and badges were required to enter the town. The Y-12 plant produced uranium and lithium for every U.S. nuclear weapon destined for the Soviet Union.

Today, atomic workers face a new potential enemy: disease. Weapons workers throughout America believe their health was harmed by radiation exposure; a claim that the United States Department of Energy actively fought for years. However, the testimony of thousands of sick workers caused the government to reconsider its position.

Workers from Y-12 and the K-25 facility less than 10 miles away, are a part of the approximately 20,000 nuclear workers who believe they developed diseases from exposure to radiation and toxic heavy metals. The government now admits some illnesses such as a lung disease caused by beryllium, a metal used in nuclear weapons production, are results of on the job exposure.

Glen Bell, a Y-12 machinist, is one of the one hundred Oak Ridge workers who have developed Beryllium disease.

GLENN BELL: Sometimes I have peaks where I don’t have any symptoms at all. I can do almost anything I want to do. I have other times when my breathing capacity drops so low and stays that way that I either have to go in the emergency room or go in the hospital and take breathing treatments and they run IVs. I have to do that typically at least once a year.

NARRATOR: Other diseases are not easily linked to worker exposure - possibly because the effects of constant low-level radiation and heavy metal contamination are difficult to prove.

Ann Orick worked at the K-25 facility as a data clerk. She handled radioactive samples sent to Oak Ridge from several nuclear facilities.

ANN ORICK: They may have been broken, dirty, spilled over, no I.D.s on them whatsoever. And I would clean and repackage and carry them. I would pick them up and gather them up next to my body, and carry them.

NARRATOR: Ann Orick developed 84 medical conditions that she believes are a result of her work.

ORICK: I was so deathly sick that I couldn’t even get up and do anything. And I was so discouraged at that point, and they want to blame a lot of this on “Well, you’re just depressed.” Of course I am. If you had 84 things wrong with you at one point would you not be depressed?

NARRATOR: Ann and thousands of other workers may never know the extent of their health problems due to government policy that equated secrecy with security.

Harry Boston works for the Department of Energy. He is the Deputy Manager for Environmental Clean Up at the Hanford Nuclear facility in Washington state.

HARRY BOSTON: As a result of the secrecy, workers weren’t always aware of what they were working on or what the hazards were, and neither were their supervisors. And that likely did result in people being exposed to hazards that they were not aware of.

NARRATOR: In the interest of national security, the materials used to manufacture nuclear weapons were blacked out of employee medical records. While most workers agree that secrecy is important, they also believe they have the right to know to what they have been exposed.

ORICK: There are things I won’t talk to you about, about what I did, or what I saw. I won’t do it. I would never do it. But it’s not going to hurt you that I don’t do it. And they haven’t been open. And the part that should be open is just the part of what, maybe, you were exposed to.

NARRATOR: Did the United States government know how dangerous these materials were? A 1949 declassified document states that 27 deaths had occurred from beryllium poisoning related to weapons production. Yet workers were not protected until the early 1990s.

BELL: There was a common expression: you could eat the stuff and it wouldn’t hurt you.

NARRATOR: Toxins from Y-12 contaminated the environment as well as workers.

East Fort Poplar Creek is off limits to the public. The government admits that between 1944 and 1963, two million pounds of mercury escaped into the environment. Today, hazardous mercury levels are still detected in the creek.

Questionable disposal practices added to the public’s exposure. Radioactive scrap metal from Oak Ridge was shipped by railroad to the Witherspoon scrap site in Knoxville, Tennessee and recycled. Workers at Witherspoon and this similar site in Oak Ridge were unknowingly exposed to toxins and radiation.

Oak Ridge is only a small portion of America’s enormous radioactive clean up problem. The situation at Hanford, Washington is even worse.

In boat on Columbia River, pointing out small signs along shore

BOAT CAPTAIN: You know what I like about these signs here? Is they’re really big and you can read what they say.

NORMAN BUSKE: So once you get on shore you realize you’ve been irradiated.

NARRATOR: Norm Buske is a physicist for Nuclear Weapons Free America.

BUSKE: These are the K reactors, K West and K East, and they have storage basins next to them where they’ve kept the spent fuel that’s really, really still radioactive. Huge amounts of it. And there’s concerns from whistle blowers that in fact those basins are leaking.

NARRATOR: The Hanford Nuclear Reservation sits on the bank of the Columbia River. Hanford’s history in nuclear weapons research began with the world’s first nuclear explosion and ended in 1989 when it’s reactors were shut down.

During the 1940s and 50s, Hanford released radioactive particles as a by-product of plutonium processing and as secret government tests. One such experiment intentionally released iodine-131 into the atmosphere so the military could determine how far it would spread.

Richland, Washington borders the Hanford site. Many people raised in Richland during the 1940s and 50s have developed diseases they believe are linked to the Hanford releases.

Radioactive iodine-131, a by-product of nuclear production, affects the thyroid gland. Resident s of the communities surrounding Hanford, known as “downwinders,” believe they suffer health problems related to the radioactive releases. Their suspicions were confirmed when in May 2000 they received letters from the Department of Energy that stated the Hanford releases might have put resident’s health at risk.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry determined that Hanford releases exposed two million people, 14,000 of whom are at risk of developing thyroid problems. However, the actual number of those who develop thyroid problems due to iodine-131 will never be known.

TRISHA PRITIKIN: Then I developed a tumor on my neck, and this was a little bit of a shock. It still...some of it here, it was about as large as my fist.

NARRATOR: Trisha Pritikin is a Hanford downwinder. She believes her health problems are related to the radioactive releases.

PRITIKIN: And the tumor, it was very obvious. It was sitting here, and I got very sick, and I couldn’t breath.

NARRATOR: Trisha has a dysfunctional thyroid and will be on Cynthroid, a medicine that imitates the thyroid function, for the rest of her life. Trisha’s parents both worked at Hanford and died from cancer.

PRITIKIN: My dad’s dead and my mother’s dead. Something’s wrong with this picture.

NARRATOR: Trisha believes a combination of radioactive material brought home from her parent’s Hanford work site, and tainted milk, increased her risk for several cancers. In addition, she played in the Columbia river during the 1950s, when Hanford simply dumped radioactive and chemical waste into the river.

On Columbia River, pointing to shore

PRITIKIN: Well, where we are is near the 'F' Reactor, the old 'F' Reactor. And right to the right over here are the islands where a lot of us would go and have picnics in the 50s. There was very warm areas near the shore of the reactors where the effluent from the reactors was dumped tight in to the river. A lot of us as kids remember the joy of the warm water that we’d swim in.

NARRATOR: Hanford’s cooling pipes also released Cobalt-60, a radioactive metal, into the river.

PRITIKIN: And in the mean time when you’d get out of the warm water you would play in the sand and the dirt on the islands which was covered with a layer about like that of Cobalt-60. So we enjoyed... these were the joys of childhood in Richland.

BUSKE: 400 billion gallons of radioactive and hazardous liquid waste from Hanford were dumped into the ground. So much that it raised the level of the underground water table by 20 to 40 feet. For decades this nuclear waste has slowly seeped into the river.

BOSTON: Today there is chromium reaching the river from old disposal sites. There’s strontium-90, radioactive strontium, reaching the river. There’s tritium reaching the river.

NARRATOR: Current government efforts are focused on cleaning up the site so it may returned to the public.

BOSTON: The goal is always to clean it as clean as you possibly can because then you can do anything with it. But it’s not always technically or economically feasible to do that. So working the regulators, clean up levels are selected that protect public health and the environment.

NARRATOR: The Washington State Department of Ecology imposed a strict clean up schedule for Hanford in March 2000. It’s concern is that some areas are not being cleaned fast enough. Besides state pressure, local citizens and activist are worried about the impact Hanford has on the Columbia River.

BUSKE: So this is one of the real threats to the river right here, and it’s something they’re working on, but we might say they still haven’t come close to the truth.

NARRATOR: While the free-flowing river is relatively uncontaminated, radioactive elements from Hanford are seeping into the sediments. Some scientists believe these seeps endanger the spawning cycle of the Columbia River salmon.

BUSKE: The problem in the river, at the points of discharge, that’s where the seeps go in, and the river bed where the salmon spawn.

Norman and camerawoman come aboard from shore, rinsing their shoes:

BOAT CAPTAIN: No problem. They’re radioactive, my boat’s radioactive...

BUSKE: Don’t put it like that...

NARRATOR: Downwinders from Hanford, the citizens of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and nuclear workers nationwide have battled the government for health care for years. Today, workers at the Portsmouth nuclear facility in Piketon, Ohio that produces enriched uranium, tells stories similar to those from almost every other nuclear facility.

VINA COLLEY: When I got sick I ended up having three tumors, chronic bronchitis, thyroid problems, memory loss, joint and muscle pain, I had a tumor removed off the back of my neck.

NARRATOR: Vina Colley is a Portsmouth electrician.

COLLEY:And today I have knots comin’ up in here in my glands. They started about three weeks ago. So every day is always something different,

NARRATOR: As at Oak Ridge and Hanford, safety practices at Portsmouth were inadequate.

COLLEY:They never, at no time, told us what chemicals we were working in or if there was any hazards there at the plant. It wasn’t until 1999 that they finally admitted that they had plutonium there.

NARRATOR: Portsmouth, Hanford and Oak Ridge are small pieces of the vast nuclear complex puzzle. Due to the Cold War secrecy, no one knows the full extent of the overall damage, however estimates indicate that 79 million cubic meters of soil and two billion cubic meters of ground water are contaminated. Virtually every one of the nation’s 16 weapons plants has a legacy of nuclear contamination.

Peducka, Kentucky made headlines in 1999 due to worker health concerns and pollution.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco, is using plutonium encrusted air filters up to 22 years past their recommended service life.

Savanna River, South Carolina and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory were responsible for radiation releases from building bombs.

Radioactive exposure was not limited to specific locations. While thousands of Americans were affected by radioactive releases from the weapons complex, the largest national exposure came from above ground nuclear tests during the 1950s and 60s.

Dr. Owen Hoffman is President of SENES, Oak Ridge, Inc., an organization that analyzes health risks related to radiation exposure.

Dr. OWEN HOFFMAN: The big sources of releases, radioactive materials to the environment really came from the test sites.

NARRATOR: There were a total of 217 nuclear atmospheric tests in eleven locations, including the Pacific Ocean, Bikini Atoll, and the Nevada Test Site. Approximately one hundred above ground nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada test site from 1951 to1962. These tests released several radioactive materials, including iodine-131, which has been linked to thyroid cancer.

By reconstructing these tests, scientists have found that radioactive fallout covered the entire United States, including areas as far from the Nevada test site as the East Coast.

HOFFMAN: A calculation can easily be made to look at just the Nevada Test Site iodine-131 alone, and there you will find, for a girl born in 1952, and living in Washington, DC and drinking fresh sources of milk, the dose to the thyroid of that girl would not be much different than a girl on a similar diet of the same age, living in Clark County, Nevada.

NARRATOR: A study conducted by the National Cancer Institute found the Nevada test site fallout generated anywhere from 8,000 to 200,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer nationwide.

Scientists claim those exposed to large doses of radioactive iodine-131 as children, are at risk for thyroid cancer; and those that received multiple exposures, for example from both the atomic tests and Hanford, may develop an improperly functioning thyroid that could cause serious health problems.

Many Americans were exposed to iodine-131 through contaminated milk.

HOFFMAN: A grazing animal that produced milk, would be a major food source to children, and it’s primarily children who were on a diet of fresh milk, during the time of testing, are those who are most at risk.

NARRATOR: Children’s thyroid glands are still under development. This make children susceptible to iodine-131 and potential life-long health problems.

PRITIKIN: People can slowly, and insidiously develop the first symptoms of thyroid disease: fatigue, indigestion, headaches, heart irregularities; in women: infertility, in ability to carry pregnancy to term.

NARRATOR: Proving a ling between health problems and exposure is difficult. Because downwinders suffer from ailments that could be caused by a variety of factors, including radiation, it is difficult to directly link their health problems to specific radioactive releases. The government has no records to prove a cause and effect relationship between the releases and health problems.

The medical records of atomic workers do not contain the proper data to show a correlation between their health problems and their exposure. This is often due to the policy of blacking out information related to the weapons materials in health reports.

In a congressional hearing in March 2000, worker testified to the intentional misrepresentation of medical records.

WORKER: I had two medical diagnoses: one original, one altered.

NARRATOR: To add to the confusion, not all of those who were exposed became ill. Workers received varying exposure depending on where they worked and how often they were moved from one building to an other.

Other factors include age at the time of exposure, and how much tainted milk and produce was consumed.

Efforts by workers and downwinders to sue the government are consistently thrown out of court, due to the concept of sovereign immunity.

BELL: Yes, there’s a problem with sovereign immunity. The government more or less cannot be sued unless they give you permission to sue.

NARRATOR: Over the past decade the Department of Energy has declassified thousands of secret documents about America’s nuclear weapons complex, and slowly raised awareness of the severity of the public health problem.

Even so, it was not until 1999 that Energy Secretary Richardson finally admitted the government had in fact harmed nuclear weapons workers. He recruited Dr. David Michaels to conduct field hearings, with the hopes of developing a compensation package.

Dr. DAVID MICHAELS: Secretary Richardson had made his position very clear. We have to look independently at the exposures. If we’ve made people sick, we have to take care of them. We have to stop fighting them.

NARRATOR: The meetings confirmed what most workers had suspected for years, there are common ailments that seem linked to work exposure.

Dr. MICHAELS: Well, not surprisingly we’ve heard from many sick people, and people have told us they’ve been exposed to very dangerous chemicals, and they report that their physicians in many cases, or, and in many cases, world famous physicians, have associated their illnesses with the work that they did.

NARRATOR: In April 2000, the Energy Department announced a plan to financially assist workers harmed by radiation exposure.

?: It is time for the government to finally bring justice to the workers who deserve it and who are forgotten. We’re expanding our efforts to help workers recoup their medical expenses and lost wages and to provide other assistance.

NARRATOR: The government is proposing a payment of $100,000 or a combination of lost wages, medical expenses and job training, for workers with Beryllium disease or radiation based cancers. In addition, specific groups of workers at Peducka, KY, Portsmouth, OH and Oak Ridge, TN may be eligible for individual sums of $100,000. This proposal is waiting for congressional approval.

As a result of Secretary Richardson’s proposal, additional bills that increase the lump sum payment and include coverage for additional illnesses have been introduced in Congress.

While many Americans exposed to radiation believe the government’s proposal is a good first step towards solving the larger problem, weapons workers claim that it is less than a perfect solution.

BELL: They are addressing some of the issues as they are with the beryllium, some cancers that are radiation induced. It seems to me they are trying to appease a small amount of the people at the expense of excluding an extremely large amount of people.

NARRATOR: These workers advocate an alternative plan that consists of long term medical care for all affected workers. They point out that $100,000 would not cover lost wages, much less pay for medical treatment.

Downwinders generally agree that the government’s proposal is a positive step, but some are concerned that broader issue is not being addressed.

PRITIKIN: And I feel that people exposed in communities, who are not workers, who are children of worker who are ill, or who lived in the communities surrounding the sites where emissions were... took place, or the Nevada Test Site, need to be included in this compensation bill.

NARRATOR: Although it is scientifically difficult to link off site exposure to health problems, Dr. Michaels thinks there is a connection.

Dr. MICHAELS: We certainly have plenty of people around the complex who I have spoken with personally who I think there’s very strong medical evidence that our exposures caused or contributed to their disease.

NARRATOR: If the government did cause health problems by releasing radioactive and toxic materials from their facilities, should it be held accountable?

PRITIKIN: Personally, in my own opinion, I feel that health care for the rest of people’s lives, for those diseases which are logically linked to the exposures we received would be very helpful.

NARRATOR: Today, iodine-131 is no longer found in our nation’s air, land and rivers. But due to poor disposal practices, some believe our nations’ nuclear facilities still pose a risk to the environment and to public health.

Most Americans consider nuclear weapons production a thing of the past. But 50 years after the first bomb, the U.S. continues experiments to enhance its nuclear arsenal and to produce hazardous nuclear waste.

To prevent the reoccurrence of health problems, the Department of Energy recently began a worker protection plan, that actively encourages workers to take part in safety measures.

BOSTON: This worker involvement in safety, and this integrated approach to safety, where we take into account protecting the public, protecting the environment, protecting the workers, that’s all part of an integrated safety management pro... or integrated safety management system, that’s being integrated across the DoE complex.

NARRATOR: Besides protecting current employees, should the United States care for sick workers and the exposed population? How should it take responsibility for the damage it caused? Some believe the government has a responsibility to provide adequate health care for workers and downwinders, raise public awareness about radiation releases, and clean up nuclear contaminated sites quickly.