Help for New Mexico downwinders has passed the Senate for a second time. Here's what you need to know.

With the Oscars right around the corner and “Oppenheimer” likely to be honored, people in New Mexico who grew sick with cancer after the first nuclear weapon test depicted in the movie are also in the spotlight. Now they might get new help from the federal government.

The Senate voted 69-30 on Thursday to reauthorize and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, with support from New Mexico’s senators. The expansion still needs to pass the House, where it was previously killed.

What is the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act?

In 1990, RECA first passed and created a federal program to compensate people with certain types of cancer who were exposed to atomic radiation. The program benefits former uranium mine workers and people who live in communities downwind from nuclear weapons testing. RECA will sunset in June unless Congress reauthorizes it.

From 1945 to 1992, the U.S. government conducted 206 above-ground nuclear weapons tests. Uranium is a key component in nuclear weapons. Half of the uranium mined for nuclear weapons in the U.S. was mined on the Navajo Nation.

New Mexico downwinders have never been included in the program. RECA also does not include uranium miners who worked in mines after 1971. The bill the Senate passed would expand those covered by RECA to include those groups. The bill would include compensation for downwinders in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah.

The Senate passed the RECA expansion in 2023 for the first time, but it was pulled out of a military spending bill in December, shortly before that spending bill passed the House, effectively killing it. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., reintroduced the RECA expansion and reauthorization in February by attaching the amendment to a foreign aid package.

Why RECA is important to NM senators

“Many of our family and friends from across New Mexico and across America are fighting cancer and other chronic illnesses and diseases every day, and that’s only those that are still with us. There’s so many that we don’t have any longer,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., who has been trying to expand RECA since his first year in Congress in 2008. “It’s critically important, in my opinion, for the federal government to take responsibility and liability and acknowledgement of what happened.”

Expanding RECA is a chance at justice for Americans who have been exposed to nuclear radiation, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday.

“The families who lived downwind from the Trinity explosion have lived the consequences of that day for every moment of their lives,” Heinrich said. “These families were never told that the white dust falling around them that day would contaminate their bodies, would contaminate the bodies of the children they had yet to bear. That it would contaminate the crops, water and livestock they had built their communities around.”

Luján said he thinks not originally including New Mexico in RECA lacked common sense.

“There needs to be a recognition of the injustice that’s happened, not just in New Mexico, but in so many parts of America, and this continues in the form of nuclear waste storage,” Luján said. “There are more and more people that continue to be exposed in so many different ways, and the United States cannot simply turn a blind eye and walk away from this.”

Why one New Mexican has spent years pushing for this expansion

Tina Cordova, a longtime advocate for expanding RECA and founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, said passing the legislation will acknowledge the damage to the people of New Mexico and allow them to finally heal.

“People have been suffering without assistance in New Mexico for 79 years this year. And not only has the overexposure to radiation caused us illness, it’s caused us emotional, psychological, and financial damages as well,” Cordova said.

Cordova grew up in Tularosa, and her father was 4 when the Trinity Test was conducted. He died from cancerous tumors in his mouth. Cordova herself got thyroid cancer at 39.

Restitution will help families, Cordova said, but she plans to push for more health care coverage, especially for people in rural New Mexico.

Why has it been so difficult to add NM downwinders to RECA?

Cordova said the science about damage caused from nuclear testing has come a long way since RECA was established in the 1990s.

“I just don’t think there was a full understanding of how widespread the damage was,” she said. “Ninety-three detonations took place in the Nevada desert. We had monitoring stations all across the American West. We know where the fallout went — it went to New Mexico by the way as well. And so those things weren’t part of the public knowledge at the time that RECA was established.”