Tampa Bay Members of Congress Press for Answers on Sick Pinellas Plant Nuclear Workers

Three members of Congress who represent Tampa Bay are calling on the federal government to act on long-stalled medical compensation claims from former workers at the Pinellas Plant, the General Electric facility in Largo that built nuclear weapons components during the Cold War, the Tampa Bay Times reported Wednesday, Oct. 7.

U.S. Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, Kathy Castor and Gus Bilirakis issued statements after a Times investigation last month described how the former workers, now in their 70s and 80s and many diagnosed with cancers commonly linked to radiation, have spent years trying to prove their illnesses came from the plant. A petition that would make it far easier for them to collect federal benefits has been pending since December 2019.

What the lawmakers said

Luna, a Republican whose Pinellas County district includes the site of the former plant, said her office has been working with some of the people affected. "Let me be clear: In no way is it OK for a federal agency to be protected when knowingly exposing their workers to harmful substances," she said in a statement to the Times. "We will continue to fight on their behalf."

Castor, a Tampa Democrat whose district includes parts of southern Pinellas County, said the workers should not be trapped in bureaucracy.

"My neighbors who worked at the former Pinellas Plant answered the call and helped our country. They deserve answers, a fair process and a government that acts with urgency. They should not have to spend their remaining years fighting Washington for the help and recognition they were promised," Castor said.

Bilirakis, a Republican who represents most of Pasco County along with Citrus and Hernando counties, invited former workers and surviving relatives in his district to contact his office. He said he is "looking into this issue to better understand the federal review process and whether there are unnecessary barriers preventing eligible former workers from receiving the assistance they deserve."

Rep. Laurel Lee, a Republican representing parts of Hillsborough, Pasco and Polk counties, did not respond to the Times' requests for comment. Neither did the offices of U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, the newspaper reported. Luna, Castor, Bilirakis and Lee are all running for reelection this year in redrawn districts.

The plant and its workers

The Pinellas Plant sat on a 99.9-acre site between Largo and Pinellas Park. According to a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health presentation in August, it began operating in 1957, manufactured neutron generators, a key nuclear weapon component, for its first 10 years, and later expanded into specialty capacitors, lithium batteries, vacuum switch tubes and radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Production ended in September 1994, and decontamination ran through 1997. The plant employed about 2,000 people at its peak.

The U.S. Department of Energy owned the plant and General Electric operated it under contract. According to the workers' petition, as reported by the Times, staff handled or worked near plutonium, uranium, radioactive cobalt and beryllium, a carcinogenic metal. Many said they were never told about the risks.

After the plant closed, Pinellas County bought the property. Its main building is now the Young-Rainey Science, Technology and Research Center, leased to more than 20 businesses, while the Energy Department continues to monitor groundwater and remediate the site.

Advocate Denise DeGarmo, a retired professor who has assembled what she estimates are more than 100,000 documents on the plant, told the Times more than 3,000 people worked there over the decades. Former machinist Elton Scott, 72, of St. Petersburg, who had bone cancer, told federal officials in August that former workers keep a running list of colleagues who have died. It recently reached 694.

How compensation works

Congress created the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act in 2000 to pay medical bills and compensation to civilians who got sick building the nation's nuclear arsenal. The Department of Labor administers claims. To qualify for radiation-related cancer benefits, most workers must go through "dose reconstruction," in which NIOSH estimates how much radiation a person likely absorbed based on historical records.

That is where the Pinellas workers have struggled. Federal officials have argued the plant's records show exposures were too low to make cancer likely. The workers are seeking designation as a Special Exposure Cohort, which would let anyone in the covered group who worked enough days at the site and developed one of 22 specified radiation-linked cancers, including kidney, bone, lung and breast cancer, receive benefits without dose reconstruction.

The key milestones for the petition, known as SEC-00256, are below, according to NIOSH and the Times.

The government's case

At the Aug. 26 meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health in Tampa, NIOSH health physicist Madeline Cook presented the agency's evaluation. The petitioners asked for a class covering all employees from January 1957 through December 1997. NIOSH evaluated a class through Dec. 31, 1990.

The petition qualified because a 1990 Energy Department "Tiger Team" assessment found that 70 percent of required monthly urine samples and 35 percent of required weekly samples were not submitted, and that about 20 percent of workers who left in 1988 did not give exit samples. NIOSH concluded that tritium was the main internal exposure, that sealed plutonium and uranium were not internal dose concerns, that doses among monitored workers were low, and that dose reconstruction is feasible for every exposure type.

Workers dispute that. They told interviewers they handled uranium powder or loose plutonium, but the government said it found no records to support those accounts, the Times reported. "The question is not whether radioactive materials were present at the Pinellas plant. We know that they were," DeGarmo told the board.

Delays under the federal overhaul

The process slowed further in 2025, when the Trump administration suspended the advisory board's meetings indefinitely. The board, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, faced dissolution unless its charter was renewed by Sept. 30, 2025, which President Donald Trump did through an executive order that month. DeGarmo told the Times that under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the board's work group now needs approval from department lawyers each time it wants to meet.

Some board members appear sympathetic. Brad Clawson, a retired nuclear fuels specialist from Idaho, told the former workers in Tampa that reconstructing a facility gone since the 1990s is difficult. "Nobody knows it like you guys do," he said.

What's next

The petition goes next to a board work group, but that meeting had not been scheduled as of the Times' September report, partly because officials and consultants still had to file paperwork. "It's out of our hands," board chair Dr. Henry Anderson said. Any board recommendation would go to the Secretary of Health and Human Services for a final decision.

Former workers and survivors in Florida can file EEOICPA claims with the Department of Labor regardless of the petition. Bilirakis has asked constituents to contact his office, and Luna says her staff is already working with affected families. For the aging workers, the timeline is the issue. DeGarmo has said many believe federal officials are waiting for them to die.