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The human cost of Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project should be a cautionary tale. The U.S. is ramping up nuclear testing anyway.

Two people wearing yellow shirts hold signs addressing Speaker Johnson during an outdoor protest. Another person in sunglasses and a cap stands nearby. The scene takes place on a sunny day with clear skies.
Andres Leighton
/
AP
Tina Cordova, right, an activist with the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, offers a handshake to an attendee of a campaign event with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican U.S. House candidate Yvette Herrell of New Mexico, during a demonstration in Las Cruces, N.M., on Aug. 21, 2024. The Consortium is asking Johnson to pass a Senate bill to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include New Mexico Downwinders and post 1971 Uranium Miners.

Researchers studying nuclear winter predict climate models in the aftermath of a nuclear war which could lead to mass famine and a global humanitarian crisis contributing to the death of billions of people. As lead author Lili Xia noted on the last episode of Twelve Thousand Bombs, her landmark paper can only predict how black carbon pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere will impact food security because a widescale nuclear conflict has never happened. And Xia does not account for the impact of radiation fallout on food production and health, which is know—because it has happened.

In 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine remains the worst nuclear disaster in history. The World Health Organization has predicted that radiation exposure from Chernobyl led to 5,000 people getting cancer. Twenty percent of those were thyroid cancer. Some say the totals are much higher.

The United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons. In 1945, the military detonated atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing months of World War II. They knew the risk of radiation exposure could lead to detrimental health outcomes. They knew because they tested the bombs—on American soil.

J. Robert Oppenheimer chose a remote spot in south central New Mexico to build and test the world's first atomic bomb. The people who lived in the surrounding Tularosa Basin were not asked for permission or warned of the risk posed to their health and safety.

In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), providing one-time payments to Americans who contracted cancer due to radiation exposure. Until 2022, New Mexicans were not eligible for RECA, including so-called “downwinders” who, for generations, have endured high rates of cancer due to close proximity to Los Alamos Laboratory and the Trinity test site.

“Our government came here; they invaded our lands and our lives,” said Tina Cordova of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. “They knowingly and willingly damaged us, and they have walked away for 79 years. We are the collateral damage of our government’s pursuit of nuclear superiority.”

Cordova is a lifelong New Mexican from Tularosa, a town 45 miles from the Trinity Test Sight. Founded in 2005, Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, gathers data and lobbies for legislation seeking reparations for the “downwinders” whose families lived in close proximity to nuclear test sights.

Updated RECA Legislation giving one-time payments to New Mexicans who contracted cancer as a consequence of nuclear testing has been allowed to expire, blocked by House Speaker Mike Johnson despite broad, bipartisan support. The congressional stalemate comes as testing programs ramp up and the world braces for the possibility of nuclear war.

Listen to Twelve Thousand Bombs on the NPR App or wherever you get your podcasts. For a full transcript of the episode, visit Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Lauren Warnecke is a reporter at WGLT. You can reach Lauren at lewarne@ilstu.edu.