Irene Schnorr and Fran Brannan have never met, but they're sisters in the same struggle.

	Online Graphic: Nuclear Weapons Workers See a chart showing the number of claims filed on behalf of former nuclear weapons workers.

Both filed claims on behalf of cancer-stricken loved ones who worked at Cold War-era nuclear weapons sites in Western Pennsylvania under a federal program designed to compensate victims of radiation-induced illnesses.

Both women's claims have been denied. Neither can understand why.

Schnorr and Brannan, who plan to appeal, have plenty of frustrated company. Of the more than 800 cases filed on behalf of workers at 16 eligible Western Pennsylvania facilities since the program was launched in 2001, just four have been paid out.

So far, 342, or roughly 40 percent of the local cases, have been denied and officially closed. The rest are winding their way through the system.

Government officials blame the dismal payout record on a slew of improper filings, such as claims for non-covered diseases or for facilities not covered under the program.

But scores of local claimants who meet the filing criteria are still being denied compensation. They say the program is excluding too many deserving workers.

And critics nationwide complain that the process is confusing and fraught with delays, devastating to ill workers and their spouses in their 70s and 80s who don't have time to wait.

Schnorr, Brannan and thousands of others each are seeking a lump sum of $150,000 due former atomic weapons employees (or their survivors) who were exposed to radiation and several other substances that gave them cancer, beryllium disease or chronic silicosis.

The workers, who produced or tested nuclear weapons mainly during the 1940s and '50s, were employed by the government or private companies with government contracts, such as Aliquippa Forge in Aliquippa and the Westinghouse Atomic Power facility in East Pittsburgh.

During that time, it wasn't unusual for employees to be kept in the dark about what they were handling or to be deceived about their levels of exposure. The federal compensation program was intended to help make up for those wrongs.

There are about 350 eligible sites nationwide, including the 16 in Western Pennsylvania. Qualified workers also can have their medical expenses covered, starting from the time they file the claim.

Workers from certain sites -- 130 nationwide, including three in Western Pennsylvania (see chart) -- with any illness caused by radiation or a range of toxic or biological substances also can file with the federal government for help proving a workers' compensation claim for cash and medical benefits from the state.

That part of the program, known as "Subtitle D," is administered by the Department of Energy. Claims for the lump-sum payments, which are made under "Subtitle B," are handled by the Department of Labor.

Irene Schnorr, 78, a widow formerly of Springdale and Bethel Park, filed for the $150,000 settlement in 2001. Just this month, her claim was denied. Through a complicated process called "dose reconstruction," the government said there wasn't a sufficient probability that her late husband's prostate cancer was caused on the job.

Schnorr said she can't believe the decision. "He worked so many years with radioactivity," she said. "I can't understand."

Her husband, A. Joseph Schnorr, who died in 1986 at age 63, worked at C.H. Schnorr & Co. in Springdale in the 1940s. He was a machinist at the metal fabrication plant, owned by his uncle, and routinely handled uranium for the Manhattan Project.

He never wore protective gear, Mrs. Schnorr said. There was no need to.

"They didn't know much about how dangerous [radiation] was in those days," she said from her current home in Houston. "He came home pretty dirty and you washed your clothes with their clothes."

Schnorr, who lives on Social Security and limited savings from her job as a records analyst, said getting $150,000 would have been "a godsend."

"It hasn't been easy," she said. "They get your hopes up and you think you'll have something in your later years. I keep praying."

She called the experience "disgusting" and "exasperating." The nearly three-year saga required digging up decades-old records and going through reams of documents she didn't understand.

"I wish we old people had an advocate," she said.

For more than a year, Denise Brock of Missouri has been on a crusade to help people like Schnorr. Now a full-time activist, she founded United Nuclear Weapons Workers from her mobile home in Moscow Mills after going through a similar excruciating experience helping her 80-year-old mother file a benefits claim in 2002.

The unexhaustible Brock says she feels obligated to help elderly claimants wade through the bureaucracy. "If I don't help them, who's going to," she has said.

A Labor Department official, who didn't want to be quoted by name, defended the benefits program, saying the government is doing the best it can under a crush of claims and the tedious process of reconstructing records of aging facilities that have been torn down or are no longer in business.

Of 51,521 claims filed nationwide, payments have been made to more than 10,000 individuals --roughly 20 percent of the total, the official noted. Final decisions are still pending on about half of all claims.

(The Energy Department, which runs the program that aids workers in filing state workers' comp claims, has an even bigger backlog. Of the nearly 22,657 cases filed, final decisions have been reached on just 217.)

Throughout Pennsylvania, 178 claims worth $26 million have been paid. Nearly all the money, however, has gone to workers and survivors at two Eastern Pennsylvania plants run by Beryllium Corp. of America.

That's because beryllium disease is more easily linked to on-the-job exposure than cancer, according to the Labor Department official. "There's no doubt beryllium disease is from one cause," he said.

In contrast, cancer claims must undergo dose reconstruction, a process in which government scientists try to gauge the worker's level of radiation exposure and the likelihood that it caused the disease.

If the probability is determined to be at least 50 percent, the claim is approved.

The Labor Department official called the reconstruction process "claimant friendly," meaning "the benefit of the doubt" always goes to the worker.

Brannan, whose deceased father's claim was filed on behalf of her 80-year-old mother, Genevieve Barowich of McKeesport, finds that hard to believe.

"He was 49, died of esophageal cancer, which wasn't in the family, a nonsmoker who took good care of himself. It doesn't make sense" that his claim wasn't paid, she said.

In her father's case, scientists determined there was just a 19 percent likelihood that his cancer, which also was in his stomach, was caused by exposure during his work as a pipe expander operator at U.S. Steel's former Christy Park Works in McKeesport.

Peter Barowich worked for U.S. Steel from 1945 until his death in 1971, about a month after being diagnosed with cancer. The Christy Park facility conducted tests in 1959 and 1960 to demonstrate that rotary piercing of uranium was possible.

Brannan said her mother, who went to work as a deli clerk after her husband died, sorely needs the $150,000 settlement. When Mr. Barowich died at age 49, he was a year shy of qualifying for a pension.

The government won't discuss individual cases. But the Labor Department official said the program is working as intended.

"There's a methodology. If they know the type of process and materials [at the facility], they can estimate the amount of radiation," he said.

Meanwhile, legislation aimed at easing the dose reconstruction process and speeding claims has been languishing in the House and Senate.

Schnorr, the widow in Houston, fears any fix will come too late.

"I think they're waiting for all of us to kick the bucket," she said. "I really do."