Fund for Victims of Nuclear Waste Exposure in Limbo as Congress Challenges Costs

More than two decades ago, Congress declared that victims of government-induced nuclear contamination who developed cancer and other serious illnesses — including uranium miners and those exposed to radiation from Manhattan Project atomic tests — should receive federal compensation.

“The health of the individuals who unknowingly participated in these tests was compromised to serve the national security interests of the United States,” reads the law, which was passed in 1990. “The United States must acknowledge and take responsibility for the harm done to these individuals.”

Now that statute is known as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, is in jeopardy and is set to expire in June with no clear path to renewal. And an attempt to substantially expand this beyond Cold War casualties, to others harmed by its aftereffects in the decades since, has hit a brick wall on Capitol Hill.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly in July to add legislation to renew and expand the program to the annual defense policy bill. But the final version negotiated behind the doors by congressional leaders dropped that measure, sponsored by Senators Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico.

Republicans objected to the high price tag, which Congress estimates could be as much as $100 billion.

In an angry speech on Thursday, Mr. Hawley said the move amounted to Congress “revoking” the apology it made to victims decades ago.

“This allows this program to expire,” he said. “That turns our backs on the tens of thousands of good Americans who sacrificed for their country, who dutifully gave their health and in many cases their lives to this country, and got nothing.”

The original legislation was written with a limited scope, intended to compensate those who participated in or were present at the testing of above-ground atomic bombs, a hallmark of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, or uranium miners who worked between 1942 and 1971.

The law has paid more than 2.5 billion dollars It has provided benefits to more than 55,000 claimants since its creation in 1990, according to congressional researchers. Claimants, including children or grandchildren of those who would have benefited from the program but have since died, will receive a one-time payment ranging from $50,000 to $100,000.

The updated version by Mr. Hawley and Mr. Luján would increase the number of people eligible for compensation, as well as increase the top payout to $150,000. The law currently limits eligibility for “down-winders,” or people who lived near one of the testing sites, to those who lived in a handful of counties in Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

“The members who once worked on this policy left out states like New Mexico — not just the entire state,” Mr. Luján, who has pushed to expand the right to individuals in most Western states, said in an interview. . “They left out the entire province where the first bomb was tested. That alone shows that people are left out.”

The bill, which President Biden has endorsedargues that the federal government should compensate anyone seriously ill from the legacy of the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

It would extend access to the federal fund for 19 years and expand access to Missourians sickened by radioactive waste that was never properly disposed of — and in some cases left out in the open near a creek — in St. Louis, home to a uranium processing site in the 1940s.

a blockbuster report by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press found earlier this year that generations of families who grew up in the area have since dealt with “rare cancers, autoimmune diseases and other mysterious illnesses that they have come to believe are the result are from exposure to the waters and sediment.”

It wasn’t until 2016 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised residents to avoid the creek completely, and the cleanup is expected to last until 2038.

“It is true that the Manhattan Project is a thing of the past and that the Cold War nuclear tests are a thing of the past,” Mr. Hawley said in an interview. “But people are still dealing with the consequences of that.”

Unless Congress passes new legislation extending the law, the fund will close in June. Republican leaders in both the House of Representatives and the Senate objected to its inclusion in the annual defense bill, citing a Congressional Budget Office report that estimated the proposed extension would introduce $140 billion in new mandatory spending.

Mr. Hawley and Mr. Luján said they had tried to water down the legislation to reduce costs, but Republicans insisted the billions of dollars involved would still be unsustainable.

Congress could still try to pass the legislation on its own, but it is increasingly rare for single-issue bills to pass both chambers and onto Mr. Biden’s desk. That’s why the pair had tried to use the massive annual defense bill, which was considered a must-pass item, to push it through. Now they are regrouping.

“Every option is on the table to make this happen,” Mr. Luján said.