Trinity test

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.

Officials with White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico are expecting even more visitors than usual for its Trinity Site open house on Saturday. The public affairs office is warning of waits up to two hours to enter the site. They attribute the uptick to renewed interest in nuclear history following the release of the film “Oppenheimer.”

On this episode Associate Professor Myrriah Gomez talks about her book “Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos.”

The Senate passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act last week and for the first time, it also approved an amendment that expands the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. This could have a profound impact on people who lived near the site of the 1945 Trinity Test, the first atomic explosion, which took place in southern New Mexico. They have been excluded from compensation, as have uranium miners who did work after 1971. Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinder Consortium, spoke with KUNM the day after the Senate vote.

On this episode we talk with Lucie Genay, author of “Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry.”

There’s a lot of buzz around the new movie “Oppenheimer,” which tells the story of the physicist at the center of the Manhattan Project and starts its run in theaters this week. For some in New Mexico, that story hits close to home.An advocacy group has purchased ad space at five theaters in Santa Fe and Albuquerque to run a reminder of the damage caused by nuclear testing in the Southwest.

Sunday was the 78th anniversary of the Trinity Test, the world’s first nuclear explosion, which took place in southern New Mexico. At a remembrance in Santa Fe, Archbishop John Wester renewed his call to eliminate nuclear weapons. He was joined by anti-nuclear activists and people from a variety of faith traditions in person and online.

Since the detonation of the first nuclear bomb in 1945, people who have lived downwind from the Trinity testing site have complained of negative health…

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…

The first time an atomic bomb was ever detonated, it happened in New Mexico. The Trinity test spread radiation far and wide here in 1945. People fighting…