Program to compensate people downwind of nuclear weapons tests sunsets

A federal program to compensate people who got sick after being exposed to radiation through uranium mining or nuclear weapons testing is ending. A group of bipartisan House members, including New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, are pushing for an expansion of the program to be added to a defense spending bill.

“I am disappointed that Speaker (Mike) Johnson sent the House home without taking action on RECA before the sunset date, putting the coverage and compensation of American families at risk,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was created in 1990 and has paid out an estimated $2.6 billion on 40,258 claims, according to a 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Justice. The expansion could cost an estimated $50 billion to $60 billion over the next 10 years.

Sunsetting of the program will not impact people who already have claims pending before the Department of Justice, said Democrat Leger Fernández, but the DOJ will not be able to consider new claims after June 10 until an extension is passed.

“We are asking people, if you’re holding on to a claim form that you have not submitted, you wanted more documentation, whatever, get that claim form postmarked by June 10,” Leger Fernández said.

What does RECA do?

The compensation program gives lump sums to uranium mine workers and downwinders who developed specific diseases if they lived in an area and time frame covered under the act .

The DOJ can award $75,000 to people who got sick after working on nuclear tests before 1963; $50,000 to people who lived downwind from the Nevada Test Site in specific counties of Nevada, Utah and Arizona from 1951 to 1958 or in 1962; and $100,000 to uranium workers with specific illnesses, if they were working in specific states between 1942 and 1971.

The expansion passed by the Senate and sponsored by Luján and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., would include all of Arizona, Nevada and Utah and areas in New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Guam. It would also increase compensation to $100,00 for downwind victims and surviving family members. The Senate bill also addresses the impact of radioactive waste dumping and uranium processing by expanding to include parts of Alaska, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.

How would a RECA expansion affect New Mexico?

New Mexico downwinders have never been included in RECA. The proposed expansion would add New Mexico downwinders and extend the cutoff for uranium mine workers. The expansion would include people who worked in uranium mines after 1971.

The Navajo Nation contains over 500 abandoned uranium mines, and from 1944 to 1986, almost 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands, according to the Environmental Protection Agency website.

“These are hard days,” said Tina Cordova, Tularosa Basin Downwinder Consortium founder. “Difficult days for lots of people. Lots of anger, lots of frustration, lots of disappointment, lots of tears.”

Cordova is from Tularosa and many of her family members have gotten cancer she believes is connected to the nuclear weapons testing in New Mexico. Cordova is also a cancer survivor after getting thyroid cancer at 39.

Cordova’s father was 4 at the time of the Trinity Test, the detonation of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert in 1945. He developed mouth cancer twice, despite never smoking, and died from cancerous tumors. Her grandmothers and great-grandfathers developed cancer. Her sister had cancer. Some of her cousins have died from cancer, as did one of her aunts. A niece, a cousin, a cousin’s young daughter — all have received cancer diagnoses.

One of her aunts, who lived in Tularosa at the time of the Trinity Test, is in treatment for breast cancer. If RECA were expanded, she would be included under the program for the first time.

“We bury our loved ones on a regular basis,” Cordova said. “What else do they want from us? The people of New Mexico have given so much.”

Will the House consider expanding RECA?

The House has yet to hear the Senate bill to extend and expand RECA, but its text has been proposed as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual piece of legislation that sets spending levels for the Department of Defense.

Leger Fernández believes the RECA amendment has the votes to pass and wants House Speaker Johnson to allow the amendment to be brought to the House floor for a vote.

“Some people feel that the price tag is too high, and they don’t want to have any additional spending. Let them vote no, if that’s the position,” Leger Fernández said. “But those of us who believe that the United States, which has always acknowledged this liability for some of the victims, should apply the compensation to all the victims, we want to be able to vote on that amendment.”

On Tuesday, Johnson will decide which NDAA amendments will be considered on the House floor.

Last year, a bipartisan group of senators tried the same move: attaching an amendment to the NDAA that would expand RECA. House Republicans pulled the amendment from the bill shortly before it passed.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, proposed extending the program without expanding it or only expanding to include Missouri and New Mexico, which Hawley and Luján opposed.

Leger Fernández said that Congress might consider a short extension so that the program does not expire, while continuing to attempt a vote on the expansion proposal, but she does not support the two-year extension without expansion.

“There are some who say it’s too expensive, and we often point out that the price for the weapons program was already paid,” Leger Fernández said.

“It was paid when we paid the scientists, the engineers and it was paid when the downwinders, the uranium miners and the people exposed to the toxic stuff had to go to the doctors, lost their lives, lost their health. ... They’ve been paying the price for our nuclear weapons testing program. We just think it’s now time for the United States to pay those bills, not the individuals, because they sacrificed their health and their lives for the country’s national security.”

Over the next 10 years, the United States is expected to spend $750 billion on modernizing the nuclear arsenal, according to a 2023 Congressional Budget Office report.