The Victims of US Nuclear Testing Deserve More Than This
W.J. Hennigan The New York Times
For decades, members of the communities near nuclear test sites, as well as others involved in weapons production, have endured rare cancers, autoimmune disorders and other illnesses. (photo: James Lee Chiahan)
They call themselves downwinders — a global community of people who lived near nuclear testing sites. In America, more than 100 nuclear devices were exploded in aboveground tests in New Mexico and Nevada from 1945 to 1962. For decades, members of the communities near those sites, as well as others involved in weapons production, have endured rare cancers, autoimmune disorders and other illnesses. But only some have been compensated by the federal government for what they’ve gone through.
The downwinders who visited Washington last week are not currently eligible for federal assistance because they don’t live in the designated areas in Utah, Nevada and Arizona covered under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, known as RECA. The 1990 legislation has provided billions of dollars to people exposed to harmful radiation during U.S. nuclear tests or while mining uranium. But many affected communities, including those in southern New Mexico where J. Robert Oppenheimer’s team conducted the first atomic blast in 1945, were left off the list.
They have been fighting to be included under the law. Now RECA is to expire on June 7, bringing an end to the program. A bill stalled in Congress would extend the law and expand compensation to nearly all Americans whose documented health struggles are linked to the nuclear weapons program. The White House supports it. The Senate passed it in a rare bipartisan vote, 69 to 30, in March.
But for the past two months, Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to allow a House vote on the Senate bill. As of Wednesday, there will be just seven working days left in Congress before RECA runs out, cutting off compensation and health screenings to all affected communities.
The federal government is responsible for protecting its citizens. Washington betrayed that obligation when it exposed people to dangerous radiation for decades during the Cold War and then downplayed, denied and ignored the health risks, according to declassified documentation. American downwinders have paid for this neglect; now they’re simply asking their government for restitution.
Consider the costs borne by people like Bernice Gutierrez, 78, who was 8 days old when the world’s first atomic bomb exploded in July 1945 at the Trinity site, about 35 miles west of her hometown, Carrizozo, N.M.
None of the nearly 500,000 people who resided within a 150-mile radius of the blast were warned. The explosive yield of the Trinity test was 21 kilotons — almost 1.5 times as large as the Hiroshima bomb — sending a mushroom cloud more than 35,000 feet into the sky. Witnesses said ash rained down in New Mexico for days. Like snow, it tumbled into water cisterns, open windows, crop fields and grazing pastures.
In the years since, 29 members of Ms. Gutierrez’s family have been diagnosed with various types of cancer. Several have died, including her son Toby Jr., who died of leukemia when he was 56. Her daughter, Jeanne, is being treated for thyroid cancer. Ms. Gutierrez had her thyroid removed on the advice of her physician because, the doctor told her, a positive cancer diagnosis was all but certain. “We don’t ever ask if we’re going to get it,” she said. “We wonder when.”
Around the world, thyroid disorders are among the most widespread health impacts of nuclear fallout and contamination. The thyroid absorbs a radioactive form of iodine called I-131, a byproduct of nuclear fission used in a nuclear test, which concentrates inside the gland and can lead to increased risk of thyroid disease. While it’s impossible to connect any one person’s cancer diagnosis directly to radiation exposure from the test, the National Cancer Institute estimates that 11,000 to 212,000 cases of thyroid cancer across the country are linked to exposure to radioactive fallout from aboveground nuclear tests in Nevada.
In New Mexico a 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study noted that radiation levels near some homes in the area of the Trinity test site reached almost 10,000 times what is currently allowed in public areas. It also pointed out that radioactive debris from the test had drifted across a region about 100 miles long and 30 miles wide. More recent studies have shown that the fallout from the test was carried on the wind much farther — to 46 states, Canada and Mexico. “Our government took advantage of the fact that we knew nothing about radiation,” Ms. Gutierrez said. “We knew nothing about the cause and effect of it.”
To qualify for downwinder benefits under RECA, you must prove you lived in one of roughly 20 counties for at least two years from Jan. 21, 1951, to Oct. 31, 1958, when aboveground testing at the Nevada site was most active, or during July 1962, when a 104-kiloton explosion there displaced 12 million tons of sand and rock, hurling much of it into the atmosphere before it returned to earth as dust and in rain.
Additionally, you must have been diagnosed with one of 19 types of cancer that the government has determined are related to the nuclear program. If you check all the boxes, you can receive $50,000. In the three decades since the law took effect, only 41,200 claims have been approved, paying out some $2.6 billion. In comparison, more than 65,000 claimants have received around $20 billion under the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.
The new bill would expand eligibility for compensation to certain uranium miners and widen the current list of recognized affected areas, to include Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Missouri, Guam and other communities. It would also increase compensation to up to $100,000 per person, both retroactively and for new claimants.
In the fall, the Congressional Budget Office put the expected cost of RECA’s expansion at more than $140 billion over 10 years, but sponsors have since revised the bill, bringing the cost down, they say, closer to $50 billion. Utah’s senators, Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, both Republicans, objected to that lower price tag and some other aspects of the bill, according to statements from their offices. Last month they introduced competing legislation that would simply extend the existing RECA law for two years — without expanding coverage to include people like Ms. Gutierrez.
Their fiscal objections are surprising, given that both lawmakers are boosters of the U.S. military’s plan to build hundreds of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, one of the most expensive weapons projects in Air Force history, which also promises some 4,000 new jobs in the senators’ home state. The Air Force recently notified Congress that the missile-building program has exceeded its initial cost projections by at least 37 percent, to more than $130 billion.
Downwinders say it’s duplicitous to fund a nuclear weapon program that’s part of the emerging global arms race while refusing to treat the victims of the first one. We know nuclear weapons work because of the Cold War testing, said Mary Dickson, who was raised in Salt Lake City, about 350 miles from the Nevada test site, where the United States conducted tests until 1992. Those communities played a vital role in building the United States into the world’s sole superpower, only to be neglected later.
Ms. Dickson and her family lived north of the current RECA boundaries during the testing years. But at 29, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Years later, her sister Ann Dickson DeBirk died at age 46 after a long struggle with an autoimmune disease. A second sister was also diagnosed with stomach cancer, and a third has autoimmune disorders.
In Washington last week, a small group met with Mr. Johnson to make a last-ditch effort to persuade him and the rest of Congress to repay their sacrifice. Some went for the first time, selling personal items to pay for the trip. Others, like Ms. Dickson, make regular pilgrimages to Congress to raise awareness about what the U.S. government did — and didn’t do.
For 30 years, she’s been urging voters to pressure their congressional representatives to pay attention to the downwinders’ plight. “I was lucky I got better,” Ms. Dickson told a small crowd gathered outside the Capitol. “My cousin, who lost her husband to colon cancer, always says to me, ‘Your story didn’t end tragically, so you can carry that tragic story forward.’ I have felt an intense obligation to seek justice for all of them.”
It’s time for Congress to correct this mistake. It should not be an option to leave thousands of Americans without lifesaving health screenings and compensation. Mr. Johnson should let the House vote on extending and expanding RECA — and our lawmakers should vote yes. These Americans have waited for too long.
