The board’s recommendations now go to the Department of Health and Human Services, though it is unclear when the department will rule.  “I’m stunned,” said Laura Schultz, a former plutonium worker who has suffered from cervical and kidney cancer. “We don’t have the money to keep fighting for this.”  One panel member, Dr. James Melius, a physician, called the process “grossly unfair” and said the board had had little opportunity to review the accounts of the former workers, many of whom argued that the occupational safety agency’s records were incomplete and vastly understated their illnesses.  But a member who voted with the majority, Mark Griffon, a consultant on radiation and hazardous waste, said he felt that the agency’s scientists had proved that they could accurately reconstruct the radiation dose level for most Rocky Flats workers.  “At the end of the day,” Mr. Griffon said, “I do feel like we have data.”  Rocky Flats opened in 1952 and ultimately produced more than 60,000 nuclear weapons parts. It was closed in 1989 after a raid by federal agents investigating accusations of environmental crimes on the part of its operator, Rockwell International, an Energy Department contractor. The plant was designated a Superfund hazardous waste site by the Environmental Protection Agency, and a cleanup took place from 1992 to 2005. It is now a wildlife sanctuary.  In the absence of expedited benefits, a total of 2,682 Rocky Flats workers have filed claims over their illnesses, the steelworkers union says, with 807 approved and 617 denied. The rest, 1,258, are still pending.  On Monday, more than 100 Rocky Flats workers and supporters attended a hearing of the advisory panel in this Denver suburb. Some of them — burly men with worn faces and white-haired women with slouched shoulders — told of suffering, and sometimes death, their plain-spoken narratives in sharp contrast to the data-driven discussions of board members.  Judy Padilla, who worked as a sheet metal worker at Rocky Flats for 22 years and has since had a mastectomy, told the board: “We ask neither for sympathy nor charity. All we ask for is the truth.”  Jennifer Thompson, a former Rocky Flats worker who is a spokeswoman for the petitioners, told the panel that it took an average of 742 days to process a successful claim. Sixty-seven workers have died waiting for their benefits to come through, Ms. Thompson said.  Charlie Wolf, a former project engineer at the plant who now suffers from brain and bone marrow cancer, said he had waited more than four years before his claim was approved. “It’s hard for me to even read anymore,” said Mr. Wolf, whose bald head is creased by a nine-inch scar from brain surgery related to his cancer.  Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. of Colorado and all the members of the state’s Congressional delegation sent letters asking the panel to support the petition. Representative Mark Udall testified on Monday that the compensation program’s red tape left workers in a “Kafkaesque nightmare.”  Michelle Dobrovolny, 42, is one of 15 family members who worked at Rocky Flats. Four have died of cancer. Five others are sick, among them Ms. Dobrovolny herself, who has a brain tumor.  “We’re the forgotten bunch,” she said.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Setback for Ill Workers At Nuclear Bomb Plant. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
A federal advisory panel has recommended that former workers at a nuclear weapons plant be denied immediate government compensation.