Members of the House and Senate this week stripped a measure to extend compensation for victims of nuclear radiation exposure from a must-pass defense bill.
The amendment to the Senate’s version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would have extended the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) for 19 years and provided health care benefits to people sickened by radiation.
The amendment, written by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and cosponsored by Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), also would have expanded RECA access by including additional communities impacted by nuclear tests, uranium mining and nuclear waste storage.
RECA was most recently extended in 2022 for two years and is set to expire in June 2024.
Without Congressional action, RECA will expire in about six months, ending compensation for victims of various sources of nuclear radiation after a 30-year run. Hawley on Thursday repeated that he will not vote in favor of the NDAA without provisions to compensate victims of radiation at Cold War-era sites near St. Louis.
The Hawley proposal would also have: extended benefits for the first time to communities affected by the test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico; added residents of Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana and Guam to the program; and covered remaining areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona and additional uranium workers.
Between the end of World War II and the cessation of U.S. nuclear explosive testing in 1992, the military conducted 206 above-ground nuclear weapons tests, releasing harmful radioactive material into the air and blanketing parts of the United States.
RECA was established in 1990 to compensate individuals who suffer from cancers and other illnesses related to uranium mining and fallout from above-ground nuclear weapons tests conducted in the United States and its territories during the Cold War.
RECA currently covers individuals who lived in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona when above-ground nuclear tests were conducted between 1945 and 1962, but winds carried radiation much farther than the existing areas specified in the RECA program. Since its inception, the program has provided more than $2.6 billion in compensation to victims of radiation.
