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The Senate passed new legislation Thursday that would compensate U.S. citizens exposed to radiation by the government by renewing a law initially passed more than three decades ago.
The bill was co-sponsored by Senators Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M. It would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include more people who believe that radiation exposure caused their illnesses. Some Republicans have balked estimated fifty-billion-dollar cost. The sponsors of the bill have argued that the government is at fault and should take responsibility.
Hawley stood outside the Senate before the vote with advocates for the legislation. Several of them have been diagnosed with cancers or have family members who have been diagnosed. He remarked that it’s “hard to look them in the eye" and say they were poisoned by their government, "but we’re not going to be there for you."
The bill passed the Senate sixty-nine to thirty with twenty Republicans and forty eight Democrats voting in favor. The prospects of it passing in the House are uncertain.
Uranium processing in the St. Louis area played a pivotal role in developing the nuclear weapons that helped bring an end to World War II. Nuclear weapons provided a key defense during the Cold War. However, eight decades later, that region is still dealing with radioactive contamination at several sites.
In July, the Missouri Independent and MuckRock showed that the federal government and companies responsible for nuclear bomb production and atomic waste storage sites in the St. Louis area were aware of health risks, spills, improperly stored contaminants and other problems. However, they often ignored them.
It is difficult to prove definitively that the radioactive waste caused residents’ illnesses. However, the advocates argue that there is more than enough evidence that it has sickened people in the area.
Missouri state Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark is a Democrat who represents Florissant, an area that sits along the creek that was contaminated by nuclear waste in the 1960s. She said, “I am a two-time breast cancer survivor. I lost my mother to breast cancer, an aunt to breast cancer. Two cousins that are breast cancer survivors, a nephew that had a cancerous brain tumor and other genetic mutation deficiencies in my family. I’m here to represent a community that has been underserved, undervalued, underrepresented and unheard.”
President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2022 extending RECA for two years. It is set to expire in June of this year. The new bill would extend the law for five additional years and expand coverage to include people in Missouri as well as Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alaska and Guam. The White House indicated Wednesday that President Biden would sign the legislation if it reached his desk.
The White House said in a statement, “The President believes we have a solemn obligation to address toxic exposure, especially among those who have been placed in harm’s way by the government’s actions.”
Others organizations worried about the cost. The taxpayer advocacy group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that the legislation should contain budget offsets to pay for it.
Advocates of the legislation have been fighting for years to expand the program to include more sites in the U.S. In New Mexico, residents in the communities surrounding the area where the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945 were not warned of the radiological dangers. They did not realize that an atomic blast was the source of the ash that rained down upon them. There were many families who lived off the land, growing crops, raising livestock and getting their drinking water from cisterns.
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