by Former government employees who commissioned America’s nuclear weapons in cancer during the work cannot cause the government to check their medical claims in order to receive compensation according to the administration.
The advisory board for radiation and workers’ health, part of the US centers for the control and prevention of diseases, consists of doctors, atom experts, former employees of nuclear weapons and others who dedicate their time to understand whether a specific burden on the exposure of an employee of radiation and advising the Ministry of Health and human services is bound by potential remuneration.
Your results help to determine whether former nuclear employees in US institutions qualify for the compensation of the government.
However, due to President Donald Trump’s plan, the board was effectively closed to reduce the greatness of the federal government and to rationalize processes.
This means that those, including Steve Hicks, stay in the balance. The 70-year-old, who worked for 34 years as a core mechanic in the Y-12 National Security Complex, who accompanied the uranium for the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, fights against skin cancer and is looking for compensation.
“I got well there, but I’m not glad that I’m so sick,” said Hicks in a Friday in an interview. “And there are people who have worked there who are sick than me.”
Hicks is one of the thousands of former nuclear employees who suffer from cancer species associated with radiation exposure.
Previously, he had kidney cancer, one of the 22 types of cancer that the government recognizes and provides compensation for flat-rate figures and medical expenses of $ 150,000.
However, skin cancer is not on this list.
Hicks has spent a lot of time to apply for the government to insure its skin cancer treatment and add cancer to the “special interface cohort”, the cancer that the government compensates.
The “Special Controller Charter” was set up in 2000 by a Congress Act to compensate for former nuclear weapons workers in which cancer was diagnosed due to a high radiation exposure. In order to qualify, an employee must have worked in three gaseous diffusion plants in Kentucky, Ohio or Tennessee for at least 250 days before February 1992 and have one of the 22 types of cancer.
But to add another cancer An extremely tedious process is on the list and can take years.
When it was set up for the first time, Congress had 13 cancer on the list and over the years have added over the years over the years.
“I contacted politicians and the white house and heard nothing back,” said Hicks to Reuters.
But the process has now become practically impossible because the board has been inactive since the beginning of the Trump administration.
The advisory board for radiation and workers’ health was in the process of reviewing eight petitions of former nuclear workers when HHS suspended its activities in January.
The board should meet six times a year after the law. But his 10 members said Reuters that it hadn’t met since December 2024.
“The meetings of the advisory board for radiation and workers’ health are currently required due to the outstanding administrative requirements for which the program is actively working,” a CDC spokesman told Reuters.
The independent the CDC asked for a comment.
From last year, the United States had achieved 25 billion US dollars for compensation and medical services, according to the Energy Ministry, the more than 100,000 nuclear workers who claimed claims.
But that could end soon because it has a law on September 2025.
If the Trump administration does not extend the remuneration program, the former employees of nuclear weapons, hoping to receive support in their medical payments, will no longer be the opportunity.
“The suspension of the board of directors effectively stops the entire remuneration process for core workers and allows many without the medical coverage and recognition that they urgently need,” Brad Clawson, a former nuclear fuel operator in the Idaho National Labor, told Reuters.
“Thousands and thousands of people had no day to prove that they were injured.”
