Workers who got sick after handling radioactive material at the Hanford nuclear reservation in southeastern Washington are locked in an ongoing fight with the federal government over their compensation claims. The Department of Energy has continued to contest benefit claims from these workers, arguing that something other than their time at the site caused their cancers, neurological diseases and respiratory illnesses.
According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, the DOE has filed more than 500 appeals aimed at preventing benefits from reaching sick workers and their survivors. The scale of that resistance is detailed further in reporting from ProPublica, produced jointly with Cascade PBS, which examined state records covering a three-and-a-half-year period beginning in 2023. During that stretch, workers filed 102 new claims for benefits, and the DOE did not recommend approving a single one of them.
State Overrules Federal Objections Most of the Time
Despite the DOE's objections, Washington state — which has final say over the claims — approved 75% of those 102 cases. The report notes that the DOE then appealed all but seven of the state's approvals, continuing to contest the vast majority of claims even after state authorities had already sided with the workers.
The human cost of that prolonged legal back-and-forth is stark. About 152 workers' claims remain stuck in what the outlet describes as legal limbo — approved by the state but still under appeal by the DOE — and half of those workers are already dead, per the same account.
Millions Spent Fighting Claims
The financial scale of the DOE's resistance is also significant: the agency has spent nearly $12 million on outside lawyers and expert testimony to fight state compensation claims, the report states. One case illustrates how long these disputes can drag on. In the nearly eight years the DOE spent fighting worker Lonnie Rouse's claim, the agency filed more than 20 appeals contesting different aspects of his case. Rouse's lawyer said the DOE awarded him most of his back pay in 2024.
Coverage Rules Have Shifted Over Time
A 2023 report to the Washington State Legislature on Radiological Hazardous Waste claims shows that the state had expanded who qualifies for presumptive compensation coverage, broadening it beyond Hanford site workers to include employees at other radiological hazardous waste facilities, excluding military installations. The same report indicates the list of covered diseases was narrowed somewhat during that update, though the available text does not specify which illnesses were affected.
The reporting on sick Hanford workers comes from journalists Lizz Giordano and Brandon Block, who filed the investigation for Cascade PBS and ProPublica. Block later joined OPB's Think Out Loud, which broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m., to share additional details about their findings on the ongoing dispute between the DOE and the workers it once employed at the sprawling nuclear site.
