Workers at the nuclear facility in Dimona "were exposed for eight hours a day to a year's worth of radiation," a radiation expert told the Petach Tikva District Court on Wednesday. Dr. Thelma Byrne's testimony came in the context of an ongoing case that began in the mid-1990s when a suit for damages was filed by 44 employees of the Dimona reactor and the Sorek Nuclear Research Center after they were diagnosed with cancer. Many of the plaintiffs have since died from their illnesses. Byrne is the former head of the radiation safety department at the Sorek Nuclear Research Center. She told Judge Esther Dudkevitch that had real-time checks on radiation levels been conducted, perhaps the workers would not have been exposed to the radiation, and some of them could have been saved from infection. "I worked with materials whose nature was unknown, and we became infected. They did not tell us what we were being exposed to." "Radiation safety was a marginal issue back then. Not like it is today," Byrne added. "In the nuclear facility's open hall, where the employees worked eight hours a day, they were exposed, on a daily basis, to a level of radiation which a person is usually exposed to in the span of a year," she said. The workers want to be delineated as injured on the job and receive compensation for their cancers, which they believe are due to being exposed to radioactive materials during their time as employees at the nuclear facilities.
Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox!
