I 
108TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 3843 
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 25, 2004 
Mr. UDALL of Colorado (for himself and Mr. BEAUPREZ) introduced the fol-
lowing bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and 
in addition to the Committee on Education and the Workforce, for a pe-
riod to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for con-
sideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the com-
mittee 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:
(1) The Energy Employees Occupational Illness 
Compensation Program Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 
7384 et seq.) (hereinafter in this section referred to 
as the ‘‘Act’’) was enacted to ensure fairness and eq-
uity for the civilian men and women who, during the 
past 50 years, performed duties uniquely related to 
the nuclear weapons production and testing pro-
grams of the Department of Energy and its prede-
cessor agencies by establishing a program that would 
provide efficient, uniform, and adequate compensa-
tion for beryllium-related health conditions and radi-
ation-related 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 included 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–
(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 over the lifetime of the plant at 
the Rocky Flats site. Even in 2004, a former 
worker from the 1950s was monitored under 
the former radiation worker program of the De-
partment of Energy and found to have a signifi-
cant internal deposition that had been unde-
tected 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-
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 until the late 1950s, and most of 
those measurements through 1970 have been 
found to be in error. In some areas of the plant 
the neutron doses were as much as 2 to 10 
times as great as the gamma doses received by 
workers, but only gamma doses were recorded. 
The old neutron films are being re-read, but 
those doses have not yet been added to the 
workers’ records or been used in the dose recon-
structions for Rocky Flats workers carried out 
by the National Institute for Occupational Safe-
ty and Health. 
(D) Radiation exposures for many workers 
were not measured or were missing and, as a 
result, the records are incomplete or estimated 
doses were assigned. There are many inaccura-
cies in the exposure records that the Institute 
is using to determine whether Rocky Flats 
workers qualify for compensation under the 
Act. 
(E) The model that has been used for dose 
reconstruction by the Institute in determining
whether Rocky Flats workers qualify for com-
pensation under the Act is in error. The default 
values used for particle size and solubility of 
the internally deposited plutonium in workers 
are in error. Use of these erroneous values re-
duces the actual internal doses for claimants by 
as much as 3 to 10 times less than the Rocky 
Flats records and autopsy data indicate. 
(5) Administrative costs related to Rocky Flats 
claims have been substantial, but only a few Rocky 
Flats cases have been processed. 
(6) Some Rocky Flats workers, despite having 
worked with tons of plutonium and having known 
exposures leading to serious health effects, have 
been denied compensation under the Act as a result 
of potentially flawed calculations based on records 
that are incomplete or in error as well as the use of 
incorrect models. 
(7) Achieving the purposes of the Act with re-
spect to workers at Rocky Flats is more likely to be 
achieved if claims by those workers are subject to 
the administrative procedures applicable to members 
of the special exposure cohort. 
(b) PURPOSE.—The purpose of this Act is to revise 
the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation
Program Act so as to include certain past and present 
Rocky Flats workers as members of the special exposure 
cohort. 
SEC. 3. DEFINITION OF MEMBER OF SPECIAL EXPOSURE 
COHORT. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 3621(14) of the Energy 
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program 
Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 7384l(14)) is amended by adding 
at the end of paragraph (14) the following: 
‘‘(D) The employee was so employed as a 
Department of Energy employee or a Depart-
ment of Energy contractor employee for a num-
ber of work days aggregating at least 250 work 
days before January 1, 2006, at the Rocky 
Flats site in Colorado.’’. 
(b) REAPPLICATION.—A claim that an individual 
qualifies, by reason of subparagraph (D) of section 
3621(14) of that Act (as added by subsection (a)), for 
compensation or benefits under that Act shall be consid-
ered for compensation or benefits (notwithstanding any 
denial of any other claim for compensation with respect 
to that individual). 
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