BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/GTTY IMAGES
KENTUCKY’S
KING
rushed to Paducah for a tour of
the facility.
McConnell and Bunning requested a Government Accountability
Office report on the situation at
the plant, but the agency returned
a scathing indictment of the senators’ own inaction. Since 1993, McConnell had served on the Senate
Appropriations Committee -- the
panel responsible for the government’s final funding decisions
-- but according to the GAO, the
Department of Energy hadn’t been
given the money it had requested
to clean up the Paducah site.
“The funding available for cleanup had been much less than requested [by DOE],” the April 2000
report reads. “Cleanup at the site,
including the removal of contaminated scrap metal and low-level
waste disposal, was delayed because of funding limitations.”
All told, there were roughly
496,000 tons of depleted uranium
in storage, according to the GAO,
along with 1 million cubic feet of
“uncharacterized waste.” Drum
Mountain had swollen to 8,000
tons of life-endangering scrap and
stood nearly 40 feet tall. The feds
suggested that the plant, so utterly compromised, could become its
own spontaneous threat. “Some of
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
this waste and scrap material poses a risk of an uncontrolled nuclear reaction that could threaten
worker safety,” the report reads.
With a wave of press coverage
focused on the Paducah plant,
McConnell did something that few
in Washington would expect from
the fierce Obamacare opponent:
He worked to pass what amounted
to a new entitlement that allowed
plant workers over age 50 access
to free body scans and free health
care. The program also provided
$150,000 lump sum payments to
McConnell
speaks next
to a tower
of 20,000
pages of
health care
rules and
regulations
at the 2013
Conservative
Political
Action
Conference
in National
Harbor, Md.,
in March
2013.