DOE to Sick Workers: Chill

This is certainly a surprise: The Department of Energy is dragging its feet coming up with data to determine whether former nuclear weapons workers were made ill by exposures on the job.

Worker advocates want the program moved from DOE to the Department of Labor.

A federal program established three years ago to help compensate thousands of workers made ill by exposure to toxic materials at government weapons facilities is "failing" and needs to be reorganized, according to a bipartisan group of senators.

The Department of Energy has not properly implemented the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, creating a seven-year backlog of claims, the senators said Friday in a letter to leaders of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on energy and water development.