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radiation exposure compensation act
Nuclear Justice Efforts Are Here to Stay
The states that have caused harm to peoples around the planet can finally stop pretending that such harms are either nonexistent or that they have done enough to address them.
Nov 19, 2024
On November 7, the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a resolution to help victims of nuclear weapons use and testing. Brought forward by the Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati, and co-sponsored by 39 additional U.N. Member States, the resolution received 169 votes in favor, with only four nuclear weapon possessors—Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—voting against it. The remaining five nuclear armed states (China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States), plus Poland, all abstained.
The vote is a resounding affirmation that nuclear justice efforts are here to stay. The states that have caused harm to peoples around the planet, including their own citizens and those whose care they were entrusted with, can finally stop pretending that such harms are either nonexistent or that they have done enough to address them. The nuclear weapon possessors, most especially the five nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, United States, and the United Kingdom—recognized as such by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, must engage in earnest.
Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain.
Ever-growing understanding of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon attacks by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the testing of nuclear weapons that lasted for decades and reached numerous corners of the globe, provided a huge impetus behind the Humanitarian Initiative, a successful effort started in the early 2010s by a group of states in collaboration with civil society, all motivated to change the nuclear weapons status quo. Coupled with the growing appreciation of what nuclear war would bring today or tomorrow (subject of another U.N. resolution that passed this month with 141 in favor votes, 30 abstentions, and France, Russia, and the United Kingdom voting no), as well as the research on the risk of nuclear weapon use and the recognition that no adequate response could be devised for such a possibility, the Humanitarian Initiative led to successful efforts to bring into the U.N. system a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or TPNW).
When the TPNW was drafted in 2017, the diplomats recognized that it wasn’t enough to prohibit nuclear weapon activities, but that the past and present consequences for people and the environment had to be addressed head-on. This led to the Articles 6 and 7 of the TPNW on victim assistance, environmental remediation, and international cooperation, which are collectively referred to as the humanitarian provisions of the treaty. The goal is not just to make these ongoing harms integral to the effort to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons, but to address them directly and provide tangible results for the communities that have suffered from adverse health and socioeconomic impacts for decades and whose environments may still be radiologically contaminated. Having entered into force in 2021, the TPNW is now faced with the implementation of these provisions for two states that are already parties to the treaty, Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati. Kazakhstan was the site of 456 Soviet nuclear tests from 1949 to 1991, while Kiribati was home from 1957 to 1962 to United States and United Kingdom tests whose cumulative yield was equivalent to more than 2,000 Hiroshima bombs.
The humanitarian provisions of the TPNW have led to the broadening of conversations about these harms and the new norm arising from the treaty of the obligation to address them. While the United States had a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act from the early 1990s until its expiration earlier this year, and France introduced its Loi Morin law in 2010, these efforts have been severely limited in their scope and impact. In both cases, the definition of a victim was restricted in such a way as to prevent many of those harmed from qualifying for the compensation. Even for the people who have qualified, the assistance has been inadequate. Worse yet is the case of all of the communities that have been completely disregarded and excluded from such compensation schemes.
What is particularly powerful about the nuclear justice resolution is that, with the exception of Poland this year, it has left the nuclear weapon possessors totally alone. Even their closest friends and allies have now voted in favor of the resolution for the second year in a row. More than 70 states that have not yet joined the TPNW have now affirmed that nuclear justice is a worthwhile effort they are ready to stand behind. In this way, the resolution is a powerful example of the way in which the TPNW Is already having an impact on international norms and policies even as nearly half of U.N. Members States have yet to join the treaty.
The road to nuclear justice is long. It will include acknowledgment, compensation, and the promise to never cause such harms again. The next phase must consist of genuine and independent assessment of needs both for victim assistance and environmental remediation in all impacted areas, with the international community coming together to offer help, including technical and financial assistance. How much remains to be done will in many ways depend on what the assessments demonstrate.
Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain. Instead, future generations will see it as the rallying call that brought the international community together to guarantee the right of survival to humanity and our fellow Earth inhabitants for the foreseeable future.
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Congress Must Renew and Expand Compensation for Nuclear Downwinders
The U.S. is projected to spend over $750 billion on nuclear weapons over the next decade—a fact it feels impossible to reconcile with the abandonment of the people affected by that spending.
Aug 27, 2024
It’s been nearly 80 years since the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico. Communities have been reeling ever since.
For generations, Americans who live “downwind” of nuclear testing and development sites have suffered deadly health complications. And this summer, funding for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) expired, putting their hard-earned compensation at risk.
Coming alongside sky-high spending on nuclear weapons development, this lapse is an outrage. Funding for these communities, which span much of the country, should be not only restored but expanded.
To protect future generations—and our own—the ultimate goal should be an end to all nuclear weapons development.
Alongside New Mexicans, people in Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, and beyond have suffered health complications from nuclear testing in Nevada. And fallout from decades of tests ravaged the Marshall Islands, which were occupied by the U.S. after World War II.
Communities in Colorado were exposed to radiation from the Rocky Flats weapons plant. And people living near Missouri’s Coldwater Creek were exposed when World War II-era nuclear waste was buried there.
Over the generations since, tens of thousands of people have been affected. Health impacts include respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, birth defects, and elevated rates of cancer.
We’re from New Mexico, the only “cradle-to-grave” state in which all steps of the nuclear production process—mining, testing, and disposal—occur together. We’ve lived near impacted communities our entire lives.
Tina Cordova, co-founder of New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, says five generations of her family have suffered health and economic impacts from nuclear testing. “We are forced to bury our loved ones on a regular basis,” she said.
Uranium mining in the Navajo Nation has also taken a terrible toll. Between 1944 and 1986, 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo land. Indigenous miners were exposed to radiation without proper safety protocols, resulting in aggressive cancers, miscarriages, lung diseases, and other illnesses.
After decades of struggle to get compensation, communities impacted by nuclear weapons development finally won passage of RECA in 1990—45 years after the first atomic bomb was dropped.
The initial law provided $2.6 billion to around 41,000 individuals, limiting coverage to onsite participants and downwinders within designated areas of the Nevada Test Site. The bill was amended in 2000 to include those who contracted cancer or other specific diseases from working as uranium miners between 1942 and 1971.
Since then, there have been bipartisan efforts to expand the bill’s narrow scope to other impacted communities. In response to years of advocacy, an extended and expanded version of RECA successfully passed the Senate this spring with 69-30 in favor—and President Joe Biden’s backing.
The bill would have expanded RECA eligibility to all downwinders in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, and Guam, along with previously excluded areas of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. And it would have included miners exposed to radiation until 1990.
But Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked a vote in the House, abandoning the unseen victims of the U.S. nuclear arms race. Now RECA has expired altogether.
It’s not for lack of money. The U.S. is projected to spend over $750 billion on nuclear weapons over the next decade—a fact it feels impossible to reconcile with the abandonment of the people affected by that spending.
Meanwhile, people are still being exposed to radiation.
Even now, 523 abandoned uranium mines containing waste piles remain on Navajo territory—and companies continue to haul uranium through Navajo land, despite a nearly two-decade old ban on uranium mining there.
Mismanagement of nuclear waste is another ongoing concern. In 2019, 250 barrels of waste were lost en route to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
To protect future generations—and our own—the ultimate goal should be an end to all nuclear weapons development. But as we work toward that goal, repairing the harm to impacted communities—by renewing and expanding RECA—is a necessary next step.
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Oppenheimer Ignores the First Victims of the Nuclear Era
The movie repeats the myth that the New Mexico bomb site was in a desolate area with “nothing for 40 miles in either direction.”
Jul 25, 2023
On July 16, 1945, the world ended. Or at least it seemed that way to residents of the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico.
Unbeknownst to local civilians, J. Robert Oppenheimer had chosen their backyard as the proving ground for the world’s first nuclear weapon. The explosion, which U.S. officials publicly claimed to be an accident at a local ammunition depot, tore through the morning sky, leaving a 40,000-foot-tall cloud of radioactive debris that would cake the surrounding area with dust for days on end.
Tina Cordova, whose hometown of Tularosa lies just 45 miles from ground zero, remembers her grandmother’s stories about wiping that infernal dust off every nook and cranny of her childhood home. No one knew what had happened quite yet, but they figured it must have been something special. After all, a local paper reported that the explosion was so bright that a blind woman had actually seen it.
“We don’t ask ourselves if we’re gonna get cancer. We ask ourselves when, because it just never ends.”
When the initial shock wore off, the 40,000 locals who lived within 50 miles of ground zero returned to their daily lives. They drank from cisterns full of radioactive debris, ate beef from cattle that had grazed on the dust for weeks on end, and breathed air full of tiny plutonium particles. Only later would the real impact become clear.
Bernice Gutierrez, born just eight days before Oppenheimer’s “Trinity Test,” moved from a small town near the blast site to Albuquerque when she was 2 years old. Cancer followed her like a specter. Her great grandfather died of stomach cancer in the early 1950s. She lost cousins to leukemia and pancreatic cancer. Her oldest son died in 2020 after a bout with a “pre-leukemia” blood disorder. In total, 21 members of Gutierrez’s family have had cancer, and seven have died from it.
“We don’t ask ourselves if we’re gonna get cancer,” Gutierrez told RS. “We ask ourselves when, because it just never ends.”
Oppenheimer—the latest film from famed director Christopher Nolan—is a three-hour-long exploration of the “dilettante, womanizer, communist sympathizer,” and world-historic genius behind the ultimate weapon. The movie, based on the book American Prometheus, delves deeply into Oppenheimer’s psyche, from his struggles as a young student at Cambridge to his profound melancholy over the world he helped create.
Yet nowhere in the film will viewers find an acknowledgement of the first victims of the nuclear era. Indeed, the movie repeats the myth that the bomb site was in a desolate area with “nothing for 40 miles in either direction.” This was not for lack of effort, according to Cordova, who leads an activist group called the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. (“Downwinders” refers to those who live in the fallout zone of nuclear tests.)
When Nolan’s team got to New Mexico to film, Cordova and her team published an op-ed in the local newspaper that called on the Oppenheimer crew to “grapple with the consequences of confronting the truth of our stories, of our history.” When that didn’t work, she reached out to the production through Kai Bird, the journalist who co-wrote American Prometheus, in an attempt to get a meeting. She received a flat “no.”
Cordova says she was “aggravated, angry, and disappointed” that the filmmakers had come to New Mexico to shoot the movie (and rake in state-funded tax breaks) but showed little interest in engaging with locals affected by Oppenheimer’s work. “Tens of millions of people are going to flock to theaters to see this movie, and a lot of them have never been exposed to this history,” she added. A short mention at the end of the movie could have changed that, Cordova argues. (Universal Pictures, which produced the film, did not respond to a request for comment from RS.)
And her concerns are not just about recognition. In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which gave insurance and lump-sum payments to the people affected by decades of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. RECA payouts to date total more than $2.5 billion. But New Mexican downwinders were not included in the original law or a broader version of it passed in 2000, a fact that former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson attributes to a simple lack of awareness about their plight.
“It’s an inconvenient truth. People just don’t want to reflect on the fact that American citizens were bombed at Trinity.”
Cordova and her team have lobbied for years for an expanded version of RECA that would include New Mexican downwinders and some previously ineligible uranium miners, many of whom had little knowledge of just how dangerous their work was. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a RECA expansion bill earlier this month.
“Imagine having radioactive waste fall down like dirty snow on your homes and communities causing cancer and disease,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), who sponsored the bill in the House, in a statement. “Then think about the despair when you learn that the U.S. government compensated other communities exposed to radiation during the nuclear testing program but not yours.”
Lawmakers have introduced similar proposals several times in recent years, but, with limited public awareness behind their efforts, the proposal has never quite gotten enough support in Congress to pass.
“It’s an inconvenient truth,” Cordova said. “People just don’t want to reflect on the fact that American citizens were bombed at Trinity.”
Born in 1947 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, John Greenwood grew up a short distance from the Trinity Test site. Years of radiation exposure caught up with him in 2008, when he was first diagnosed with colon cancer.
Greenwood and his family spent four years fighting for his life. Their insurance covered 80% of costs, but the remaining 20% added up quickly given that a single chemotherapy treatment could cost $100,000. Other expenses fell by the wayside. One after another, utilities companies cut off their electricity and phone lines. Their car was repossessed.
But Laura Greenwood, John’s wife, knew their only option was to keep going. “I can’t tell you how stressful it was,” she remembered. “You go to bed crying every night wondering what you’re going to do the next day.”
John passed away in 2012, just six months after learning that the cancer had metastasized to his liver. He was the 13th member of his family to die from cancer since the Trinity Test.
Greenwood’s story highlights the devastating economic impact that years of health problems have had on downwinders. This, in part, is why RECA expansion has struggled to get off the ground in Congress, according to Laura. Many lawmakers argue behind closed doors that it would simply be too expensive to compensate downwinders and cover future medical costs related to radiation exposure.
Advocates of RECA expansion also have limited data to back up their claims of a link between the test and later cancers, which they blame in part on government secrecy surrounding the event. “The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military, and most of the authorities simply wanted to put the whole test and its after-effects out of sight and mind,” according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on the history of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
A years-long study from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) found that “no firm estimates can be established” of how many cancer cases came from the test due to limited radiation data from Oppenheimer’s team and a lack of reliable information on cancer rates and daily habits in rural New Mexico at the time. Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), who supports RECA expansion, called the NCI research “limited” when it was released.
But one impact of the test is clear. In the months after the explosion, the entire state of New Mexico saw an unprecedented spike in infant mortality, with 56% more New Mexican babies dying during live births in 1945 than in 1944. That number went back down in 1946 and has never reached such high levels since, a statistical anomaly with a 0.0001% chance of being caused by natural conditions, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
“I don’t think it glorifies nuclear weapons at all, which was the concern that some people had.”
To Nolan’s credit, Oppenheimer includes affecting scenes in which the scientist wrestles with the pain wrought by his life’s work. While it leaves out some notable parts of the history, the film offers a powerful and largely accurate account of Oppenheimer’s quest to build—and later try to contain—the ultimate weapon, according to Stephen Schwartz, an expert on the history of nuclear weapons and a non-resident senior fellow with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
“I don’t think it glorifies nuclear weapons at all, which was the concern that some people had,” Schwartz told RS. Viewers will leave with “a better understanding of why he did what he did and all the complications that ensued,” he added. “I hope that it sparks many conversations.”
But Cordova sees the lack of engagement with downwinders as a major missed opportunity. She remembered back in 2018, when the Santa Fe Opera put on a production of “Dr. Atomic,” an opera about the lead-up to the Trinity Test. When Peter Sellars, who wrote the show’s libretto, found out about the problems faced by downwinders, he invited Cordova and her team to talk about their experiences on stage before each performance.
At a climactic moment of the show, Sellars portrayed a general arguing with scientists over whether to warn locals about the blast as a group of downwinders quietly watched on from the other side of the stage. “History is about what’s happening to people you’ve never met,” Sellars told RS. “Their bodies are carrying the traces of what you did.”
Sellars says the engagement with locals affected by the blast—most of whom were Latinos or native New Mexicans—helped make the show a hit. “The show was sold out, and the talks were packed,” he remembered.
Despite her lack of luck with the Oppenheimer team, Cordova remains optimistic. She hopes the movie will encourage people to learn more about the impacts of nuclear tests and boost support for her cause. “Every movement that has ever been started has a tipping point,” she said. “This movie could [have been] that tipping point. And it still might be that tipping point.”
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