Over the course of a year we investigated ongoing worker health and safety issues at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. We found that lab contractors have amassed more than $110 million in fines and lost performance bonuses for serious accidents, radiation exposure, and other lapses since 2006. And we reported that the government has made it difficult for workers to get compensation for radiation-linked cancers.
The government says nuclear safety issues were only a Cold War problem, but workers say the lab has not accurately tracked their radiation exposure and they are being denied benefits as a result. We examined the medical and work records of Chad Walde, a maintenance worker who started at Los Alamos in 1999, and who was diagnosed with glioblastoma brain cancer and died in 2017 at age 44. He said instances of overexposure and decontamination events, remembered by friends and relatives, were not documented in his lab records. His claim was one of more than 900 to be denied for work at the lab after 1995.
We also reported on the government’s 10-year delay to make a decision on a petition that would grant benefits to those who started working at the lab until 2005 and who could prove they had a radiation-linked cancer. Chad Walde and hundreds of other workers who began working at the lab after the Cold War have died waiting for answers.