Senate Passes Bill to Expand, Extend Compensation for Radiation Victims

The Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill on March 7 that would expand and extend compensation for victims of radiation exposure.

The final tally was 69–30.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, pushed heavily by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), expands and extends the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 that is set to expire in June.

The original bill only applied to victims of certain radiation in four states: Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. The extension, if it passes in the House, would help victims in Kentucky, Missouri, Alaska, Colorado, Montana, Tennessee, Idaho, and Guam.

It would also cover toxin victims of the Manhattan Project—which produced the atomic bomb that ended World War II—in Alaska, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and those in New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was tested.

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Government officials never informed residents about the site’s hazards, and families continued to hold picnics there and even took radioactive artifacts, such as the glassy residue known as “trinitite” that formed on the desert floor as a result of the explosion, victim advocates say.

The radiation from the Trinity test eventually caused rare forms of cancer for many of the 30,000 local residents and their descendants.

“The United States Senate has the opportunity to do its part—its small part—to continue to make this nation what it could be, what we promised it will be, and to put right things that have been wrong,” said Mr. Hawley on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.

President Joe Biden signed a two-year extension of the law in 2022.

Funding Cut From the NDAA

An amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act with the text of the bill passed the Senate but was removed during negotiations to come up with the final version in December, according to Mr. Hawley.

“This is not right. These are good people who have done nothing wrong. Their government has caused this,” he said during the December negotiations.

“When the government causes injury, the government should make it right,” he continued. “That’s what we’re asking for, what the radiation compensation program does. It is wrong to let it expire. It is an injustice. It is a scar on the conscience of this body and on this nation.”

He chastised Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for allowing it to be cut as a “pay for” expenditure without a dedicated revenue source other than the general fund.

He cited names of people afflicted with cancers and “radiation-linked diseases,” from concentrations of children suffering from lymphoma and leukemia now, to the many who died young after growing up playing in Coldwater Creek—located in northern Missouri—“where the government left barrels of radioactive waste sitting out for years in the open. And for decades, the people of St. Louis were told: ‘Oh, there’s no problem. The creek is fine. No problem at all. You can play in it. Your kids can play in it.’”

The Manhattan Project will live on in Missouri because radiation illnesses “don’t just affect one generation,” Mr. Hawley said. “It’s generation upon generation because the United States government has not done what is right. It hasn’t cleaned up the contamination. It hasn’t made whole the families that they injured.”

The Biden administration supports the measure, saying in a statement that “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.”

Bryan Jung and John Haughey contributed to this report.