Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

New Mexico congressional leaders and advocates met with other federal lawmakers in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to urge reauthorizing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).

Local Indigenous communities that have been impacted by long-term uranium exposure will be traveling to Washington D.C. on Sunday to demand that Congress pass a bill that will compensate those exposed to radiation.

At the State of the Union Thursday evening there will be two special guests of New Mexico Congressional members whose presence is designed to get federal compensation for those injured by nuclear weapons production.

New Mexicans who lived near the first atomic blast have never been compensated. All of that could have finally changed last year, as Congress considered an expansion of the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act with bipartisan support. But during last-minute negotiations over defense spending, relief for people in New Mexico and potentially tens of thousands of others nationwide was unceremoniously nixed from the legislation.

Advocates who recently celebrated the possibility of expanded compensation for those harmed by radiation are reeling from a setback in Congress. The compromise version of National Defense Authorization Act does not include a Senate-passed amendment expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The expansion would have, for the first time, included people who lived near the Trinity Test site in New Mexico and their descendants, as well as uranium miners who did work after 1971.

Congress passed a law decades ago to apologize to people who were exposed to radiation when the U.S. tested nuclear weapons. New Mexico’s never been…

One year ago, KUNM reported on the effects of the Trinity Test. Thursday, July 16, 2015, is the 70th anniversary of the day the world's first nuclear bomb…