Disappointing End to Budget Talks for RECA Survivors September 30, 2024

The Leader of the House Turns a Cold Shoulder to America’s Known Victims of the Cold War

It took less than two months between December 1950 and January 27, 1951 for the US government to turn 1,350 square miles of empty Nevada desert into ground zero for 40 years of unrelenting nuclear weapons testing. Yet as of today, tens of thousands of Americans are still, 10 months into 2024, in the dark about the status of RECA, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, their lifeline as victims of the Cold War.

Passed in 1990, the need for RECA emerged after the first in-depth medical study in the 1980s — later found to have underestimated the full impact — of what the Cold War cost in terms of American lives. It is guilt funding to help the silent victims of the arms race pay for the cancers and other health effects of nuclear testing at the Nevada site — the Downwinder civilian casualties and the workers, including uranium miners, mill workers, and the drivers who transported the ore.

As was expected, this past June RECA expired. Renewal was passed by the Senate, but House Leader Mike Johnson doggedly avoided addressing RECA, which had been expanded to include more victims of America’s 928 nuclear tests, 100 of them atmospheric.

---

“The most important angle to get across … was the idea of making the public feel at home with neutrons trotting around.” – “Origins of the Nevada Test Site”

---

From Children in St. Louis to Navajo Miners, the Reach of Radiation Touched Americans Everywhere

The additional victims include children and adults in St. Louis, Missouri, who were unknowingly exposed to radioactive creek water contaminated by leaking drums from a Cold War uranium processing plant.

In Arizona, the Navajo Nation felt the brunt of the arms race: With 500 abandoned uranium mines on reservation land, 86% of the 7,890 RECA claimants from tribal nations in 2023 were Diné.

Johnson indicated that the problem was cost. Now in recess after approving a stop gap spending bill, Congress won’t deal with the budget until Dec. 20. But no one seems to know exactly what the status of RECA is in the interim, let alone what will happen three months from now.

And so they wait.

“This is not just about compensation. This is about justice, and it’s about healing,” said Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren.

---

Bipartisanship in the Senate Hits a Brick Wall in Congress

PSR Arizona called three primary advocates for RECA, a bipartisan group including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-AZ, and Rep. Teresa Fernandez, D-NM.

Hawley’s aide didn’t know but thought it might have been referred to the Judiciary Committee. “Status quo” is how Fernandez’s office described it but didn’t elaborate on what that meant. And Grijalva’s office said that the congressman is “very supportive” of the extension but couldn’t say where things stood as of now.

Unfortunately, RECA isn’t part of the bigger conversation taking place among conservative legislators and right-leaning thought leaders.

Their focus is on modernizing and expanding the weapons arsenal — and  restarting the nation’s nuclear testing program.

---

New Weapons Testing Will Require More Fuel and that Means More Uranium Mining and Man-made Plutonium 

According to the conservative Heritage Foundation in its 922-page treatise on America’s future, “Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership,” the U.S., facing dual military threats from China and Russia, must “recapitalize” our legacy Cold War nuclear forces and “modernize, adapt, and expand” the nuclear triad of air, land, and sea forces.”

In the same breath, Project 2025 urges the nation to “restore readiness to test nuclear weapons at the Nevada National Security Site to ensure the ability of the U.S. to respond quickly to asymmetric technology surprises.” For some, asymmetrical technology surprises is code for first strike.

The same people are also calling to increase domestic uranium mining and processing — mostly in the Four Corners area of the Southwest — and “accelerating” plutonium production, the latter, as Christopher C. Miller, Trump’s former acting secretary of defense, writes in “Project 2025,” “is essential both for modern warhead programs and for recapitalizing the stockpile.”

Los Alamos is on it. Responding to Department of Defense orders, Los Alamos is delivering a minimum of 30 new plutonium “pits” a year through 2026 and the government’s Savannah River Site lab in South Carolina is tasked with 50 pits per year by 2030.

---

No Surprise. Nevadans Are Not Pleased with the Idea of Reviving Testing 68 Miles from the Strip 

A state-wide coalition of conservationists, chambers of commerce, state lawmakers, community groups, and business leaders have come together, politics aside, to resist growing calls for renewed nuclear testing literally in their backyard.

Nevadans Against Nuclear Testing announced its formation in early September and said an initial, and admittedly small, poll of 600 Silver State residents showed that 73% want no part of the radioactive past.

The coalition was organized by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan global security organization co-led by former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz.

Noting that any resumption of testing would trigger another arms race, Moniz said that as someone who was “charged with certifying the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, I can tell Nevadans that there is no scientific or technical need to resume nuclear testing.”

He added, “Resuming explosive nuclear testing in Nevada will set off a diplomatic chain reaction that will damage our national security and international standing.”

It would also scuttle the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, CTBT, a global treaty that has been signed by all three nuclear superpowers, every NATO ally, and more than 150 other countries, according to NTI.

But it has not been ratified by eight participating countries, including the US, Israel, China, Egypt, Iran, and Russia, which withdrew its initial ratification in November 2023, eight months after its invasion of Ukraine.

---

We Need Your Support!

Please consider a donation to the Arizona Chapter of PSR. Our work in Arizona is literally heating up. PSR Arizona’s cost-free Resilient Neighborhood workshops are being presented throughout the Tucson area and our efforts to inform members about critical issues facing our state continue through our newsletters and website. But with your financial support, much more can be accomplished at a time when PSR’s expertise is most needed.

We’re working on electronic payments but for now please send donations by check, made out to PSR Arizona, to:

Barbara Warren
3653 N Prince Village Place
Tucson, Arizona 85719
email: bwarre01@gmail.com