For decades, we have struggled for recognition and justice as survivors of exposure to radiation from U.S. open air nuclear weapons tests on our own soil during the Cold War arms race. I don’t like calling them tests. That’s far too innocuous. They were actual detonations of nuclear bombs.
After working for years to push legislation that would expand compensation to those who have waited so long for justice, an expansion and two-year extension, surprisingly, was included in the Big – I will not call it “beautiful” – Bill signed into law July 4.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 provided a lifeline to many in 22 counties in southern Utah, southeastern Nevada and northern Arizona. But it was always too limited — not only geographically but in terms of the amount of compensation. Anyone who has had cancer or watched a loved one battle the disease knows that the $50,000 RECA provided did not begin to cover treatment, lost wages, burial costs, etc.
The recent expansion is the biggest we’ve seen and long overdue. It also ups compensation to a uniform $100,000. Downwinders in all of Utah, New Mexico, Idaho and Mohave County, Arizona, are now included. Also included are communities impacted by nuclear waste in certain zip codes of Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alaska, as well as additional categories of uranium miners and workers.
While my family, thousands of others and I are now eligible for compensation, it is a bittersweet victory, one that is wrapped in grief.
When I received the call that the expansion had passed, I broke into tears that were a mixture of gratitude and relief, mingled with sorrow. I called my younger sister who is now eligible, only to learn that her cancer has now been found in her bladder, breast and brain.
I also felt the pain of those with whom I’ve worked side-by-side in the fight for expansion. I think of their stories and how they’re still excluded from compensation: downwinders in the U.S. territory of Guam, exposed to fallout from testing in the Pacific; downwinders in Montana, Colorado, central and southern Arizona and additional counties in Nevada, including the remainder of Clark County, the state’s most populated county; and communities exposed to nuclear waste in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
The Senate twice passed a bipartisan RECA expansion bill, mostly recently in March of 2024. It included a much broader area as well as health care benefits and a five year extension. When the House refused to act on it, the entire RECA program expired in June of 2024, a devastating blow.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), a co-sponsor of the larger expansion along with Senators Ben Ray Lujan (D-New Mexico) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), managed to get a stripped-down version of the Senate bill inserted into the budget reconciliation. Utah’s delegation was reluctant to add other states and communities to RECA, but had been willing to accept a clean reauthorization.
While new claim forms and requirements have yet to be posted and implementation is likely to take time, I encourage eligible downwinders to start gathering medical records and documentation showing a year of residency between 1951 and 1962.
We are grateful that our voices have finally been heard, but our work is not yet finished. We remain united and will continue to work side by side pushing for justice for communities that were cut from the bill.
As my mentor, the late J. Preston Truman said, “It’s about justice. Not just us.”
But what is justice? Is there any real justice when the needs of so many remain unaddressed, when so many have already died waiting and more will continue to die? What we all feel so painfully is the hard reality that no amount of compensation will ever bring back what we’ve lost and the loved ones we’ve buried and continue to mourn.
Now, as we solemnly mark the 80th anniversary of the detonation of Trinity, the world’s first atomic bomb, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and the bombings weeks later of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — events that ushered in the nuclear age, we unbelievably find ourselves on the brink of a new and more dangerous arms race that reminds us how fragile our planet is.
The specter of nuclear conflict resurfaces. Global tensions flare. Nuclear nations are investing record amounts to upgrade their arsenals with increasingly more powerful warheads, and preparations are already underway for the possible resumption of testing. Have we learned nothing from the tragedies of our nuclear past?
Hearing such news sends those of us who are casualties of the last arms race reeling. Our lived experience as survivors should serve as a powerful warning of what is at stake for all of us.
We can’t undo what’s happened, but my hope is that we do all we can to ensure that ordinary citizens are never again deemed expendable for the sake of nuclear deterrence and that future generations never have to live with the same fears and consequences we have endured.
May it end with us. That is the real justice.
(Mary Dickson) Mary Dickson is a Salt Lake City, writer, downwinder and advocate.
Mary Dickson is a Salt Lake City, writer, downwinder and advocate who is internationally recognized for her work on behalf of survivors of nuclear weapons.
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