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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.
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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.
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Alicia Inez Guzmán of Searchlight New Mexico tells KUNM about finding the story of a woman who lived and died in her home town, and whose radiation was discovered in a clandestine autopsy.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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On this episode we talk with Lucie Genay, author of “Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry.”
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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.
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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.