In 1990, Bush set up a 100 million dollar fund to compensate victims of the nuclear weapons program

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Because it would be "Less expensive than paying injury and liability claims directed by the courts".

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyNRC/posts/567109973377637

New York Times October 16, 1990: President Bush set up a 100 million dollar fund to compensate victims of the nuclear weapons program. "Less expensive than paying injury and liability claims directed by the courts" http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/16/us/us-fund-set-up-to-pay-civilians-injured-by-atomic-arms-program.html GENETIC EFFECTS not taken into account

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/16/us/us-fund-set-up-to-pay-civilians-injured-by-atomic-arms-program.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

U.S. Fund Set Up to Pay Civilians Injured by Atomic Arms Program
By KEITH SCHNEIDER, Special to The New York Times
Published: October 16, 1990

Ending years of struggle in the courts and in Congress, President Bush today signed the first law that compensates American civilians injured or killed by radiation from the United States program to build and test atomic weapons.

Approved by Congress late last month, the law establishes a $100 million trust fund and is the latest in a series of extraordinary actions taken this year by the Government to acknowledge and apologize for unsafe practices at American nuclear weapons plants that may have resulted in injuries or deaths among workers and civilians. None of the money will come from private industry.

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Agencies Reverse Opposition

The President's approval came after the departments of Justice and Energy reversed the positions that they had taken for at least 13 years, opposing any court-ordered or Congressionally authorized plan to pay damage claims sought by nuclear weapons industry workers or their families.

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1. In 2008: Sick nuclear workers' cases being delayed; Compensation claims denied, dragged out

"Many ill workers have become mired in a process so adversarial that top program officials at one point considered putting some of them under government surveillance - spying on them."

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/21/sick-nuclear-workers-cases-being-delayed/

Sick nuclear workers' cases being delayed
NATIONALLY: Compensation claims denied, dragged out

Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
Posted July 21, 2008 at midnight

The Americans who built the nation's nuclear weapons are still fighting a cold war.

Tens of thousands of sick nuclear arms workers - or their survivors - from every state in the nation have applied for compensation that Congress established for them in 2000. But most have never seen a dime.

Congress promised these Cold War patriots an efficient, compassionate path to atonement. But a Rocky Mountain News investigation found that the government has derailed aid to workers by keeping reports secret from them, constantly changing rules and delaying cases until sick workers died.

Many ill workers have become mired in a process so adversarial that top program officials at one point considered putting some of them under government surveillance - spying on them.

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For half a century, the federal government's official policy was to fight any workers who claimed job-related illness, often spending tens of millions in tax dollars annually to do so. The government at times absolutely denied that the workers faced undue danger.

It was a flat-out lie.

All of that was supposed to have changed at the start of this decade, when the Clinton administration reversed the government's stonewalling and a Republican Congress decided to pay sick workers' medical bills and offer them $150,000 in compensation.

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