-Caveat Lector- http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/012577.htm Posted at 11:53 p.m. EDT Sunday, October 17, 1999 Piketon retiree says he didn't have any idea of potential danger COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A retired employee of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant says he and his fellow workers had no idea they were coming into contact with materials potentially much more dangerous than the uranium they knew they were handling. ``They just said it was uranium,'' Robert Elkins of New Boston said in a story published Sunday in The Columbus Dispatch. ``They'd tell you only what they wanted you to know.'' Elkins retired from the uranium enrichment plant, which is located in Piketon, in 1985. During the summer, news reports showed that workers at its sister plant in Paducah, Ky., unknowingly handled more than 100,000 tons of plutonium-laced uranium as part of a government program to recycle reactor fuel during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. The Dispatch reported last month that the Piketon plant, also without the workers' knowledge, received similar material. Copies of test results Elkins has kept since 1982 show positive readings for quantities of neptunium and several other nuclear byproducts that should not have been present in the uranium enrichment process. Neptunium and plutonium each can cause cancers in minute amounts. Both are thousands of times more radioactive than uranium. The plant did not test for plutonium. Elkins, 70, told the newspaper that the federal government offered $500 for his corpse in 1982. He said the offer was made at a meeting with plant officials and doctors and a physician from a medical laboratory at the government's nuclear site in Hanford, Wash. The Hanford doctor handed him an authorization form. ``He said they wanted my body for science,'' Elkins told The Dispatch. He and his wife, Leola, refused to sign the form. They declined again when asked the same question about a year later. The form, a copy of which Elkins provided to The Dispatch, says, ``Such organs or structures as might be needed for detailed study may be removed and retained.'' The newspaper said the government wanted to place Elkins on its uranium registry. That is the national tracking vehicle for people who are exposed to the radioactive element and have agreed to turn over their bodies for scientific study. Elkins was targeted because his body showed a consistently high level of uranium, The Dispatch reported. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy said Friday that one Piketon worker had agreed to be on the registry. The spokesman would not provide a name or say whether the worker is alive. Elkins, one of 12 original operators in Piketon's conversion plant, worked in that area from 1955 to 1965, when his uranium levels became so high that supervisors permanently transferred him to other areas at the site, where uranium is enriched for use as nuclear fuel. He had worried about his uranium readings over the years, but now he wonders whether he should have been more concerned about other materials. He and his wife blame a nervous breakdown he suffered in 1976 on work-related anxiety. They also wonder whether a 1979 heart attack and chronic bronchitis also are related to his job. Elkins' October 1982 test results showed that he had 0.18 nanocurie of neptunium in his system. The existence of detectable levels 17 years after he was transferred from the conversion area might suggest ``very substantial'' exposure to the material in the 1950s and '60s, said Argun Makhijani, president of the Washington-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. David Michaels, assistant secretary of energy for safety, health and environment, said his department's planned investigation of the Piketon plant will look at individuals' exposure records to determine whether a pattern exists. -- ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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