[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 41 (Thursday, March 7, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2254-S2255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, nearly 80 years ago, in Central New 
Mexico's Tularosa Basin, at a place we now call the Trinity Site, the 
world as we knew it changed.
  The Trinity test was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in 
human history, and the families who lived downwind from the Trinity 
explosion have lived the consequences of that day for every moment of 
their lives. These families were never told that the white dust falling 
around them that day would contaminate their bodies, would contaminate 
the bodies of the children they had yet to bear, that it would 
contaminate the crops and the water and the livestock that they had 
built their communities around. They were never told about the kinds of 
cancers they would get, the conditions they would suffer through, or 
the loved ones they would lose.
  These families still to this day have not received the recognition or 
the compensation for what they endured so that our Nation could be 
victorious in the Second World War. Nearly a century later, 80 years 
now, these folks deserve better. They deserve justice.

[[Page S2255]]

  It is long overdue for Congress to finally, finally amend the 
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, RECA, to include the Trinity 
downwinders, to include all Americans who were directly impacted from 
our nuclear tests and program, and to include the uranium workers who 
were exposed to radiation in service to our national defense. That is 
what we are voting on this week in the U.S. Senate. Today, we have a 
chance to finally deliver justice for the Trinity downwinders and for 
all Americans who were exposed to radioactive nuclear materials.
  I want to thank especially the Presiding Officer as it has been one 
of the honors of my career to fight alongside him for this expansion of 
RECA for our entire congressional careers.
  I want to urge all of our colleagues to stand with us on the right 
side of history today and to support this legislation.