Between World War II and the Cold War, the U.S. conducted nearly 200 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. It began with J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Trinity Test in New Mexico, which marks its 80th anniversary on July 16.
In the years that followed, 100 tests were detonated at the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas. Toxic clouds from those explosions drifted over communities in Utah and across the West. That led to often-devastating health impacts for many of the people living there, now referred to as downwinders.
When Congress passed the federal budget bill in early July, it reauthorized the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The federal program pays people who developed health problems after being exposed to nuclear testing or uranium mining during that time.
Congress allowed the program to expire in 2024, but the new legislation extends it through the end of 2028. It also expands the geographic areas where victims can be eligible for payments. Ten Utah counties were previously covered, but now the program includes the whole state.
That’s a big deal for people like Mary Dickson. She grew up in Salt Lake City while mushroom clouds rose from the desert. Since being diagnosed with thyroid cancer in her late 20s, she has become an advocate for the victims of nuclear weapons testing. (Disclosure: Dickson is a former employee of PBS Utah, KUER’s sister station at the University of Utah, and currently hosts the program Contact.)
Like many other Utahns, Dickson is now eligible for radiation compensation for the first time.
“I just started to cry,” she said, recalling how it felt when she heard the reauthorization had passed.
The program’s expansion sends a message, she said, that the government is finally starting to recognize the broad impacts the nuclear program continues to have.
“More than the compensation — more than that — what we wanted was the acknowledgement,” she said. “It's not exactly an official apology, but it is an acknowledgement, and I think that's incredibly important.”
In addition to extending and expanding the program, RECA’s reauthorization increased the amount claimants may be granted from $50,000 or $75,000 up to $100,000. Since the program launched in 1990, 8,082 Utahns have received $447.4 million through claims.
“I’m excited to see that we got it done,” said Rep. Celeste Maloy, who represents Utah’s 2nd Congressional District and voted to approve the budget bill.
“It's important to the state, because Utahns — through no fault of their own — were exposed to radiation,” she said. “But the government deliberately hid from Utahns the risks that they were forcing upon people by sending radiation over their homes.”
With the update to RECA, people who were exposed to nuclear testing between 1944 and 1962 are now eligible for payments. The previous version only covered exposure through 1958. Downwinder claims are available to people who lived for at least one year in Utah, New Mexico and Idaho and parts of Nevada and Arizona.
The program also covers people who have been exposed to uranium mines, like those around southeast Utah’s Navajo Nation. Utahns who worked in uranium mining or milling between 1942 and 1990 are now eligible.
Mining has led to decades of devastating effects for tribal families, from lung and kidney cancers to shorter life spans, said Navajo Nation Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty.
“What you saw were miners going into these uranium mines unprotected — regular clothes, a light and a hard hat — and they were exposed every day to high levels of radiation,” she said. “And they would bring that back to their families.”
The impacts are ongoing. A 2022 study from the University of New Mexico found that uranium is still showing up in the blood of Navajo newborns.
While Crotty called the bill passage a win, she said it’s bittersweet.
RECA has long excluded many people. It wasn’t until this latest reauthorization, for instance, that the program covered residents of New Mexico, where the Trinity Test took place.
“Every day they didn't provide those resources was another day that families and miners were suffering,” she said. “This could be a point of restoring that legacy, but there's so many years and decades to catch up.”
The next step is to make sure people who are eligible for RECA payments receive that money, Crotty said.
The tribe plans to ramp up its community outreach efforts to spread the word and will continue to offer a free service called the Navajo Uranium Workers Program that helps people file RECA claims. Still, she said, the process of gathering the needed documentation can often be cumbersome and confusing.
On top of that, she said tribal health care systems need additional federal funding. If someone gets a RECA payment but can’t access care for their medical issue, it defeats the purpose.
“It's hand in hand,” Crotty said. “You can't talk about the downwinders and these claims without talking about access to medical providers.”
Health care advocates have warned that the same budget bill that revived RECA could also lead to the closure of rural hospitals in Utah and elsewhere, further exacerbating access challenges for patients.
Even with the recent expansion, there are still concerns that RECA doesn’t cover everyone it should. That includes those who have lived near uranium mines but did not work there, said Tommy Rock. He’s an assistant research professor at Northern Arizona University and is part of the Navajo tribe.
More than 500 abandoned uranium mines remain on the tribe’s land, and Rock said their impact is still unclear.
“How big is the contamination? How big is the exposure?” Rock said. “In the political arena, it seems like it's a non-issue. They don't discuss this. They don't address this.”
Dickson, the Utah downwinder, said she’d also like to see RECA expand further to cover more people in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana and other areas who remain excluded.
“So many people have died waiting, and more people are going to die as they wait to perhaps be included,” she said.
Her biggest concern, however, is that the U.S. may revive its nuclear testing program and put a new generation of Americans in danger. That’s a possibility some people in politics, including conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and one of President Donald Trump’s former national security advisors, have suggested.
“To those of us who have suffered and survived all those decades of testing in our backyard, it just sends us reeling to think they would even consider doing it again,” Dickson said. “It's just, to me, unconscionable.”
