I 
110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. R. 904 
To better provide for compensation for certain persons injured in the course 
of employment at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
FEBRUARY 7, 2007 
Mr. UDALL of Colorado (for himself and Mr. PERLMUTTER) introduced the 
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and 
in addition to the Committee on Education and Labor, for a period to 
be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consider-
ation of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee 
concerned 
A BILL 
To better provide for compensation for certain persons in-
jured in the course of employment at the Rocky Flats 
site in Colorado. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Rocky Flats Special 
Exposure Cohort Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE. 
(a) FINDINGS.—The Congress finds the following: 
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(1) The Energy Employees Occupational Illness 
Compensation Program Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 
7384 et seq.) (referred to in this section as the 
‘‘Act’’) was enacted to ensure fairness and equity for 
the civilian men and women who, during the past 50 
years, performed duties uniquely related to the nu-
clear weapons production and testing programs of 
the Department of Energy and its predecessor agen-
cies by establishing a program that would provide ef-
ficient, uniform, and adequate compensation for be-
ryllium-related health conditions and radiation-re-
lated health conditions. 
(2) The Act provides a process for consideration 
of claims for compensation by individuals who were 
employed at relevant times at various locations, but 
also includes provisions designating employees at 
certain other locations as members of a special expo-
sure cohort whose claims are subject to a less-de-
tailed administrative process. 
(3) The Act also authorizes the President, upon 
recommendation of the Advisory Board on Radiation 
and Worker Health, to designate additional classes 
of employees at Department of Energy facilities as 
members of the special exposure cohort if the Presi-
dent determines that— 
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(A) it is not feasible to estimate with suffi-
cient accuracy the radiation dose that the class 
received; and 
(B) there is a reasonable likelihood that 
the radiation dose may have endangered the 
health of members of the class. 
(4) It has become evident that it is not feasible 
to estimate with sufficient accuracy the radiation 
dose received by employees at the Department of 
Energy facility in Colorado known as the Rocky 
Flats site for the following reasons: 
(A) 
Many 
worker 
exposures 
were 
unmonitored or were not monitored adequately 
over the lifetime of the plant at the Rocky Flats 
site. Even in 2004, a former worker from the 
1950’s agreed to be scanned under the former 
radiation worker program of the Department of 
Energy and was found to have a significant in-
ternal deposition of radiation that had been un-
detected and unrecorded for more than 50 
years. 
(B) No lung counter for detecting and 
measuring plutonium and americium in the 
lungs existed at Rocky Flats until the late 
1960s. Without this equipment, the very insol-
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uble oxide forms of plutonium cannot be de-
tected, and a large number of workers had in-
halation exposures that went undetected and 
unmeasured. 
(C) Exposure to neutron radiation was not 
monitored at the Rocky Flats site until the late 
1950’s, and most of those measurements 
through 1970 have been found to be in error. 
In some areas of the plant at the site, the neu-
tron doses were as much as 2 to 10 times as 
great as the gamma doses received by workers, 
but only gamma doses were recorded. 
(D) Radiation exposures of many workers 
at the Rocky Flats site were not measured (and 
in some cases estimated doses were assigned), 
while some records have been destroyed or lost. 
As a result, the exposure histories and other 
data available are not adequate to properly de-
termine whether Rocky Flats workers qualify 
for compensation under the Act. 
(E) The model that has been used for dose 
reconstruction by the National Institute for Oc-
cupational Safety and Health (referred to in 
this section as the ‘‘Institute’’) in determining 
whether Rocky Flats workers qualify for com-
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