NM senators reintroduce bill to extend compensation program for atomic radiation exposure

WASHINGTON — A program to compensate uranium miners and people who lived downwind of nuclear bomb testing then developed certain cancers came to an end last summer, but Sens. Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich are trying to renew it.

Luján, D-N.M., reintroduced the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Friday with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, as well as Heinrich, Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Republicans Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Mike Crapo of Idaho. Last year, Luján and Hawley led an effort supported by New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation to expand the Department of Justice program, which was established in 1990. Uranium miner workers who worked in uranium mines after 1971 were not originally included in the program, and New Mexicans who lived downwind of the Trinity Test have never been included.

“Today, individuals affected by nuclear weapons testing, downwind radiation exposure, and uranium mining are still waiting to receive the justice they are owed,” Luján said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that so many who have gotten sick from radiation exposure have been denied compensation by Congress.”

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. From 1945 to 1992, the U.S. government conducted 206 above-ground nuclear weapons tests. Monday was the National Day of Remembrance for Downwinders, who are people who lived or worked downwind of nuclear weapons tests and were unknowingly subjected to radiation exposure.

Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium founder Tina Cordova said she is grateful to the New Mexico delegation and Hawley. This is the fifteenth time a bill has been entered to expand RECA, she said. She remains cautiously optimistic it could pass into law.

“When you’ve buried enough of your loved ones ... you realize that there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain,” Cordova said.

The bill would expand the compensation program to include downwinders in New Mexico, as well as Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, and extend it for another six years.

Although the same bill to expand the compensation program passed the U.S. Senate in 2024, House Speaker Mike Johnson never brought the bill to the House floor for a vote. Instead the original program, which was set to sunset in June 2024, expired.

“It is vital that we unite to pass this legislation now, and that the President sign it into law,” Hawley said in a statement.