Tailings to leave Atlas site near Moab

WASHINGTON — To clean up fallout from America's atomic weapons program, Congress decided Thursday to remove the Atlas uranium mill tailings from near Moab and to increase benefits for uranium miners who the government knew would likely develop cancer.

But a move to increase compensation for other Utah downwind cancer victims of atomic bomb tests fell short.

The uranium measures were included in the annual defense authorization bill, which the Senate passed after House passage Wednesday. President Clinton is expected to sign it.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, became upset when he discovered the bill was about to create a program to compensate federal atomic bomb factory workers more than downwinders and uranium miners through laws he earlier passed.

Hatch sought to equalize the payments as House and Senate conferees worked out differences on the bill.

He wrote to conferees saying, "I think it would be extremely unwise for the federal government to compensate one class of uranium-exposed individuals more generously than any other." However, he was able to win only half his battle — winning increases for uranium miners in the West but not downwinders.

Hatch said that was because the Clinton administration argued that scientific evidence was stronger that cancer is caused by close exposure to radioactive materials in mines and factories than it is for people possibly exposed to downwind fallout from atomic bomb tests.

The new bill calls for cancer victims who were employees at qualifying federal nuclear facilities to be paid $150,000 and all future medical costs related to their illness.

Uranium miners previously had been granted up to $100,000 in Hatch's earlier Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). The new bill will allow them or their survivors to receive an extra $50,000 and reimbursement for future medical expenses.

"This is a good first step in providing additional help to all RECA individuals. But the conference report does not go far enough in my opinion," Hatch said.

Meanwhile, the defense authorization bill also approves moving the Atlas uranium mill tailings from near Moab — where they have been leaching contaminants into the Colorado River.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had proposed to simply cap the tailings on site, but Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California officials said that could still leach radioactive contamination into the Colorado River.