Department of Energy Ranger shot seen from the roof of the Herald-Examiner building, Los Angeles, California – photo: U.S. Department of Energy, NNSA – Nevada Site Office Fox shot seen from downtown Las Vegas looking west over Fremont Street – photo: U.S. Department of Energy, NNSA – Nevada Site Office After the Charlie shot, members of the 82nd Airborne Division parachute into the area near ground zero – photo: U.S. Above and behind the drop plane are vapor trails of four instrument-bearing aircraft that record scientific data on the atomic detonation – photo: U.S. Air Force B-50 drop plane is seen in the upper left.
Department of Energy Mushroom cloud rises over Yucca Flat as dust cloud begins to form below. Something happened to us, something happened …” A collage of atomic test headlines – photo: U.S. “And we just thought, ‘OK, yeah, something happened to us. It didn’t take long before, in a four or five block area, we had about 54 people on that list … “My sister, at the time, was ill with an autoimmune disease, and she and I started making a list of all the people in our childhood neighborhood who had cancer or tumors. “The more I started researching and the more I started following that story, the more I thought, ‘my government did this to me,’” Mary Dickson said. Steve Erickson is a well-known activist and a volunteer for Downwinders Inc. Mary Dickson is a downwinder and internationally noted downwinder advocate. nuclear forces would cost $494 billion over the 2019–2028 period, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is “$94 billion more than CBO’s 2017 estimate for the 2017–2026 period, in part because modernization programs continue to ramp up.”įor more on the renewal and expansion of RECA, we spoke with a pair of downwinder advocates. The Biden Administration’s current plan for U.S. “Work is in progress with stakeholders to determine the best path forward to reintroduce the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments, which expands coverage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include victims in Idaho among states impacted by exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing.”Īccording to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, from 1940 to 1996, the United States spent at least $5.5 trillion dollars on its nuclear weapons program. In a recent newsletter to constituents, he said he’s working on bi-partisan legislation that would renew and expand the dimensions of RECA to include many more states. Senator from Idaho, Mike Crapo has been a long-time advocate for downwinders. Fallout from the tests travelled around the globe. Many places in North America realized toxic levels of radiation. But research shows that parts of Idaho and Montana saw radioactivity impacts on par with Nevada, Utah and Arizona.
Geographically, RECA covers people living in a total of 22 counties with some in eastern Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. Department of Justice administers RECA and has distributed over $2.4 billion in benefits to more than 37,000 claimants since its inception in 1990, but the RECA program is scheduled to sunset in 2022. After years of lawsuits and wrangling, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) became law in 1990 and provides one-time benefit payments to “persons who may have developed cancer or other specified diseases after being exposed to radiation from atomic weapons testing or uranium mining, milling, or transporting.”