This Amarillo Woman Devoted Years to Maintaining America’s Nuclear Arsenal. She’s Paid a Hefty Price.

For Texas Monthly, Mark Dent reports on Pantex, a facility near Amarillo, Texas where “nearly all of America’s nuclear weapons are assembled, dismantled, and maintained.” Over the years, workers have fallen ill and died after exposure at the plant. Dent introduces us to Sarah Dworzack Ray, an advocate who, after her husband died young of work-related cancer, has helped Pantex employees and their families get long overdue compensation for work-related illness and deaths.

Twenty-five years ago, after a spate of nuclear-plant-related deaths from cancer and other illnesses, the federal government created a mechanism for compensating workers and their families. But authorities often took years to approve claims and required burdensome paperwork. Workers, long bound by confidentiality about plant operations, often didn’t know what they could share publicly about how Pantex had affected them, even with doctors.