A fireball rises into the sky over Nevada after the U.S. government detonated a 61-kiloton device on June 4, 1953. Nuclear weapons experiments at the Nevada Test Site spread fallout to other states, including Arizona, research and records show. (Photo via Getty Images)
It’s been two months now since Congress let the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, expire, leaving people in the West who were exposed to fallout from nuclear weapons testing with no financial recourse.
Now, data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division shows there are more than 1,000 pending claims for compensation as of the end of July.
That’s a massive increase compared to this time last year, when there were just 236 pending claims.
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It’s unclear what’s driving the surge — the Union for Concerned Scientists said in a news release that the increased media attention around RECA in the days leading up to the act’s expiration on June 10 could have raised public awareness. Or, it could be that applicants rushed to submit their claims ahead of the deadline, resulting in a backlog.
Whatever the reason, payouts from RECA are still in demand.
“The effects are lingering, it’s not over. It’s not something from our past, this is very much our present and could very well be our future. Some of those diseases can take decades to show up, so nobody connects the dots that that’s what happened,” said Mary Dickson, a Salt Lake City downwinder and cancer survivor who for years advocated for Congress to expand RECA.
Dickson spoke on Thursday during a screening for the film “Silent Fallout,” from the Japanese director Hideaki Ito. The film chronicles the global impact of U.S. nuclear weapons testing during the cold war, from British soldiers stationed in the Pacific who stood in the shadow of mushroom clouds, to Las Vegas residents who from their living rooms could see flashes from the bombs during above-ground testing in Nevada.
The film also explores the lasting effects of radiation in Utah, interviewing residents of St. George who lost much of their family to cancer and people living in Salt Lake City who have never been eligible for compensation because of RECA’s limited scope.
Whole neighborhoods were plagued with bone, lung, testicular, brain, breast and thyroid cancer; children were diagnosed with rare autoimmune diseases like lupus; and rates of leukemia skyrocketed in small, rural towns along the Utah-Nevada border.
Similar to how smoke from wildfires in the northwest U.S. now fills the Salt Lake Valley, western winds would transport radiation from the mushroom clouds in Nevada, some of which would tower miles in the air. Radioactive materials like Iodine-131 were then brought back down to the ground by rain or snow, contaminating the soil and exposing Utahns to dangerous levels of radiation.
Time’s run out for the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act
According to recent findings from the University of Utah, the entire state was blanketed by Iodine-131. And studies show the fallout traveled well beyond Utah’s borders, with radiation detected as far as upstate New York.
“I was astonished by the contamination from the atomic and hydrogen bomb testing,” Ito said after the screening, speaking through a translator. “It just contaminated the entire American continent.”
Congress passed RECA in 1990, but advocates have long decried it as inadequate. And in June, despite the introduction of several bills that would have expanded or extended RECA, Congress let the bill expire.
In Utah, the government’s radiation compensation program covered residents who lived in one of 10 counties — Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, Millard, Piute, San Juan, Sevier, Washington and Wayne — for two consecutive years from 1951 to 1958, or during the summer of 1962.
People who worked in uranium mines, mills or transporting ore in Utah from 1942 to 1971 were also eligible.
Now, no one is eligible. Applications that were postmarked on and before June 10 are being processed, but downwinders who tried to file claims after that will not receive compensation as long as Congress allows the lapse to continue.
Dickson said there are many downwinders who are just now realizing the impacts of living close to nuclear testing, despite the last above ground explosion occurring in 1962.
“We will forever be living with fallout,” she said. “Forever.”
Radius: The legacy of America’s nuclear weapons testing program from States Newsroom and MuckRock
On Friday, a spokesperson for GOP Sen. Mike Lee’s office said he believes Congress will revive RECA soon. It could be a clean reauthorization which would simply extend the timeframe of the previous program — or a bill Lee introduced that would expand compensation for all of Utah, and parts of New Mexico and Missouri.
“Senator Lee supports both the clean 2 year extension of RECA he introduced in the Senate and his expanded Downwinders Act that includes coverage for all of Utah and populations in New Mexico and Missouri. He is optimistic that the House and Senate will come to an agreement before the end of the year,” said Bill Gribbin, Lee’s communications director.
Meanwhile, staff for Rep. Blake Moore, also a Republican, told Utah News Dispatch on Friday that he supports a bill initially introduced in 2023 by Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman. Called the Uranium Miners and Workers Act of 2023, the bill extends RECA benefits to people who worked in a uranium mine or mill until 1978, but still excludes much of Utah.
“Congressman Moore remains supportive of Congresswoman Hageman’s bill, and he is optimistic that it will be passed this year,” reads a statement from Moore’s office.
Regardless of what Congress eventually passes, Ito had some strong words for how the government has responded to the plight of downwinders, pointing to the research suggesting all of the U.S. was exposed to some level of radiation. “All Americans are downwinders in some way,” he said.
“I’m very troubled by the fact that only downwinders are currently compensated,” he said. “The fact that the citizens in the U.S. were exposed at all is the first problem. By my logic, I believe everyone who was exposed should be compensated.”
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