Advocates for often aged and ailing former nuclear weapons workers have established an Internet Web page to aid the workers or their families in their frustrated attempts to seek promised government compensation for illnesses and deaths caused by exposure to radiation and other hazardous materials.

Maureen Merritt, of Nambé, an advisory board member of ColdWarPatriots.org, said the Web site was recently created to help thousands of Americans across the country who toiled in secrecy and under often hazardous conditions to build the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

An estimated 2,500 former workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory or their survivors are among the tens of thousands who have applied for compensation and medical assistance under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. The legislation, initiated in great part by then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, was enacted in 2000.

The workers, their families, and the public health and elected officials who have come to their aid contend that a confusing and interminably slow process, intransigent bureaucrats and stonewalling policymakers have, in essence, conspired to deny the workers the compensation promised them in the program.

The act is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, which uses estimates of workers' likely exposure to radiation and certain other hazardous materials to determine whether workers qualify for compensation.

Merritt said she and other advocates for the nuclear workers established the Web site, based in Denver, to better carry out their efforts to assist the workers in applying for the compensation — $150,000 and coverage of medical expenses for most. Others could receive more depending on what kind of work they did and exposure they suffered.

"This is a major step to bring us together," said Merritt, a retired chief medical officer for the U.S. Public Health Service. Much of her work was among Native Americans. "We set up a nonprofit and have combined forces to become more effective" in lobbying on behalf of the workers. "I think we will make some difference," she said.

In a related matter, worker advocates have petitioned the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to add a third class of LANL workers to the Special Exposure Cohort, which could speed up the compensation process. Workers would not have to undergo the lengthy dose reconstruction process in which NIOSH attempts to determine how much radiation workers were exposed to.

Under the petition, which would cover the years 1976 through 2005, the speed-up status would be granted to support service employees such as guards, firefighters, custodians and a wide variety of other laborers who worked in technical areas with a history of the use of radioactive materials.

Andrew Evaskovich, a LANL guard who filed the petition, said NIOSH must first determine whether the petition is valid and then has 180 days to make a recommendation to the White House Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Safety, which reviews the scientific validity of NIOSH's dose reconstructions and recommends whether workers should be granted the Special Exposure Cohort status.

Loretta Valerio, head of the New Mexico Office of Nuclear Worker's Advocacy, said two decrees of special cohort status have previously been granted to former LANL workers. One covers workers who are likely to have been exposed to radioactive lanthanum in technical area 10 at the Bayo Canyon facility from Sept. 1, 1944, through July 18, 1963.

The other covers workers in operational technical areas where radioactive materials were present from 1943 through 1975.