U.S. to Probe Exposure at Kentucky Uranium Plant

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered an immediate investigation Sunday into reports that thousands of unsuspecting employees at a Kentucky uranium plant were exposed on the job to cancer-causing plutonium.

Richardson said he would meet with workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and request a federal study into the links between worker illnesses and exposure to radioactive materials that occurred over decades at the federally owned plant.

He also called for expanding a newly created program to bring health screening and medical treatment to thousands of workers who might have been put in harm’s way at Paducah and similar facilities in the government’s nuclear weapons complex.

Paducah workers were exposed to plutonium through shipments of contaminated uranium to the plant from 1953 to 1976. The shipments stopped, but contamination remains over hundreds of acres of buildings and grounds. Workers did not learn of the problems until at least 1990. Some claim they were never told.