{"id":157810,"date":"2025-07-02T11:33:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T16:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/?p=157810"},"modified":"2025-07-02T11:40:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T16:40:26","slug":"cronkite-news-congress-poised-to-reauthorize-radiation-compensation-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2025\/07\/02\/cronkite-news-congress-poised-to-reauthorize-radiation-compensation-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Cronkite News: Congress poised to reauthorize radiation compensation program"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Rally<\/a>
Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley, far right, behind sign, and President Buu Nygren, center, in hat, march to the U.S. Capitol on September 24, 2024. They and others were calling on the House to renew an expired compensation program for victims of nuclear bomb tests and uranium mining. Photo by Gabrielle Wallace \/ Cronkite News<\/figcaption>\r\n
Senate version of GOP megabill would revive fund for uranium workers and nuclear test downwinders<\/div>\r\n
Wednesday, July 2, 2025<\/div>\r\n
By Derry Lenehan<\/div>\r\n
Cronkite News<\/DIV>\r\n
cronkitenews.azpbs.org<\/A><\/DIV>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nWASHINGTON — Congress is poised to revive a federal program that compensates uranium miners and people who lived downwind of nuclear bomb tests, more than a year after it expired.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe Senate included the program in its version of the \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill,\u201d the GOP tax-and-spending megabill approved Tuesday on a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe House version doesn\u2019t include the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. But RECA has broad support — even though Congress let it expire in June 2024.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nIf the House agrees Wednesday to the Senate\u2019s changes, RECA would not only be revived but expanded by adding eligibility for downwinders in Mohave County, Arizona, and in all of Utah and New Mexico.\r\n

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\n\t\t\n\t\t\tCronkite News: Navajo Nation rallies at U.S. Capitol for radiation compensation\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
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Survivors of nuclear testing and uranium mines are ramping up pressure on Congress to reauthorize a federal compensation program that expired in June.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

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<\/p>\r\nRECA, enacted in 1990, provides restitution to people who developed cancer or other specified illnesses after being exposed to fallout from nuclear weapons testing or uranium mining, milling and transportation.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe program has awarded over $2.6 billion to more than 41,000 claimants so far.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe Senate voted to extend RECA in March last year but Speaker Mike Johnson didn\u2019t bring it to the House floor, citing concerns by some in his caucus about the cost.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nNavajo activists held a protest in September at the Capitol to prod Congress to revive the program.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nAlmost 30 million tons of uranium ore was extracted from Navajo lands between 1944 and 1986. Between 3,000 and 5,000 tribal members worked at the mines, exposing them to harmful dust. More than 500 abandoned mines pockmark the land.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nRadiation victims view it as unconscionable for the government to turn its back on Americans adversely affected by the U.S. nuclear program.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n\u201cIt just baffles me that our country is so fast to throw us under the bus,\u201d said Linda Evers of Grants, New Mexico, who worked at a uranium mine run by the Kerr McGee Corp. near Ambrosia Lake and Grants from age 18 to age 25.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n\u201cSome of our guys gave their lives for that cause. Just because we didn\u2019t take a bullet to the head \u2026 it is still just as dead if you die from pulmonary fibrosis 30 years later,\u201d she said.\r\n

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\n\t\t\n\t\t\tCronkite News: Navajo Nation pushes for passage of radiation compensation bill\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
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People exposed to radiation from atomic bomb tests and uranium mines rallied at the U.S. Capitol to demand action on a stalled compensation program.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

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<\/p>\r\nThe Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2023 that extending RECA for another decade, and adding coverage to people exposed to nuclear waste in Missouri, would cost $147 billion.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nSen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, has been a vocal proponent of restoring the program and expanding eligibility to other Manhattan Project sites such as Mallinckrodt Chemical Works. That St. Louis facility processed 200 million pounds worth of uranium, including the material used in the first atomic bombs.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nHawley\u2019s proposal also covers processing sites in Kentucky and Tennessee and the Ross Adams Mine, Alaska\u2019s only uranium mine.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nArizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego have both advocated for RECA, though like other Democrats, they opposed the GOP megabill it\u2019s included in.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n\u201cSenator Gallego has long fought to extend and expand coverage for Arizonans who were harmed by radiation,\u201d his office said in a statement. \u201cThe measures in the Republicans\u2019 budget bill, however, fall far short of what Arizonans need and deserve, covering only a small fraction of those who have been impacted by unsafe nuclear practices \u2013 not to mention the thousands of Arizonans who would lose their health coverage under this dangerous bill.\u201d\r\n

<\/p>\r\nGallego and others have pressed for coverage of all downwinders in Arizona, regardless of what county they lived in at the time.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n \"Rally<\/a>

Survivors of radiation exposure chanted, \u201cMike Johnson pass RECA now,\u201d as they made their way to the U.S. Capitol September 24, 2024, in Washington, demanding renewal of an expired compensation program. Photo by Gabrielle Wallace \/ Cronkite News<\/figcaption>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe reauthorization would allow eligible radiation victims to file claims through December 31, 2028.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe updated program would allow payments up to $100,000 for downwinders, uranium workers and others. That\u2019s up from previous caps of $50,000 for downwinders and $75,000 for miners and others who worked with radioactive materials.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nPrevious recipients would not be eligible for further compensation.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe amendments allow claims from more victims of nuclear waste relating to the Manhattan Project, the World War II crash project led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer that developed the first atomic bomb.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe Senate bill would expand RECA eligibility to people who:\r\n

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