WASHINGTON - Under pressure from Congress, the Bush administration has decided to reverse policy and quit fighting illness compensation claims from Cold War-era nuclear weapons workers exposed to toxic chemicals.

        Final Energy Department regulations, obtained by the Associated Press and expected to be issued today, instruct contractors not to contest medical panels' findings that workers' illnesses are related to job exposure.

        The new rules reverse a decades-old policy and differ from a draft proposal circulated earlier this year that allowed contractors to contest such findings and even said the Energy Department would help pay for appeals.

        The regulations could affect more than 12,000 workers currently seeking help from the Energy Department in getting compensation. Most of the affected workers live in states with large DOE facilities, such as Ohio, Kentucky, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.

        Lawmakers from states with nuclear weapons plants said the administration's original proposal ran counter to the intent of a bill Congress passed two years ago.

        “It appears that DOE has addressed the major concerns that were raised about the draft rule last spring,” said Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who added that more workers would now get compensated.

        Richard Miller, a policy analyst with the Government Accountability Project, a Washington watchdog group, said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham “overrode his own staff and really deserves some credit for reversing some of the flaws in the previous rule.”

        The rule is aimed at helping thousands of workers across the country who were exposed to toxic substances at Energy Department facilities run by government contractors.

        Those workers were not included in a year-old federal program that provides medical care and $150,000 each to weapons plant workers made ill by exposure to radiation or silica and beryllium, which cause lung diseases.

        Instead, Congress told the Energy Department to help the chemical-exposed workers file claims under state worker compensation systems.

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