BELEN, N.M. — President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he’s open to granting assistance for people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing, including in New Mexico, where the world’s first atomic bomb was tested in 1945.
Biden brought up the issue, which potentially affects ӣƵ-area residents affected by radioactive waste produced for the nation’s atomic weapons program, while speaking in Belen at a factory that produces wind towers.
“I’m prepared to help in terms of making sure that those folks are taken care of,” he said.
New Mexico’s place in American history as a testing ground has gotten more attention recently with the release of “Oppenheimer,” a movie about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the top-secret Manhattan Project.
Biden watched the film last week while on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
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Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico spoke of how the first bomb was tested on soil just south of where the event was. The senator also discussed getting an amendment into the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which gives payments to people who become ill from nuclear weapons tests or uranium mining during the Cold War.
“And those families did not get the help that they deserved. They were left out of the original legislation,” Lujan added. “We’re fighting with everything that we have” to keep the amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act.
Lujan co-sponsored the measure to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act with U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who has championed ӣƵ-area residents who were exposed to, and sickened by, radioactive waste produced by the processing of uranium ore by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works.
Their amendment, approved by the U.S. Senate, would extend health care coverage and compensation to so-called downwinders exposed to radiation during weapons testing to several new regions stretching from New Mexico to Guam.
Biden said he told Lujan that he’s “prepared to help in terms of making sure that those folks are taken care of.”
The amendment also would provide for compensation to current and former ӣƵ residents who developed radiation-related illnesses and who lived at least one of 20 affected ZIP code areas for at least two years after Jan. 1, 1949.
The measure was not included in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act. Its fate rests with a conference committee that’s expected to work out differences in the bill.
The amendment also has the support of U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and U.S. Reps. Ann Wagner, R-Town and Country, and Cori Bush, D-ӣƵ.
The Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Coldwater Creek's issues with radioactive soil begin with work done near downtown ӣƵ for the Manhattan Project during World War II. We summarize the concerns about the creek and how radioactive material contaminated it.
