Original air date: November 17th, 2024

You might not have heard much about it, but America is in the middle of a once in a generation effort to upgrade our nuclear weapons. One that could cost taxpayers as much as 1.7 trillion dollars. Some are also now suggesting it might be time to restart nuclear testing too. Scott Thuman reports on downwinders suffering the fallout from our original nuclear tests.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

August 1945, the first and last time nuclear weapons were used in war.

The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely destroyed each by a single American nuclear bomb.

But before America unleashed those devastating new weapons, they had to be tested, so the first place to feel the effects of a nuclear blast was actually Alamogordo New Mexico dramatized in the movie “Oppenheimer” about the Manhattan project’s lead scientist.

In the decades to follow, the Cold War saw a heated race to build more and bigger nuclear weapons, and by the early 1950s, the US government decided to start testing them full time on US soil rather than on islands in the Pacific.

Laura Greenwood: My husband was born and raised in Alamogordo, New Mexico, just 63 miles from where they detonated the first atomic bomb.

Laura Greenwood’s husband John died of cancer in 2012, she’s one of many Americans who say nuclear tests have had devastating consequences.

Greenwood: They packed that bomb with 13 pounds plutonium, that has a half-life of 24,000 years.

We met Laura and her friend Mary Dickson earlier this year when they came to Washington asking lawmakers for help. Dickson is from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Dixon: We’re downwinders, that means we are survivors of nuclear tests that the government conducted in the desert of Nevada. They blew up 928 nuclear bombs there. The neighborhood I grew up in, I counted 54 people who had cancer, autoimmune diseases, other radiation related illnesses.i had thyroid cancer in my twenties. I’ve watched so many family members and friends become ill.

In 1950s and 1960s, the government never told residents to move, they said the tests were necessary and safe but a recent study by Princeton University showed radioactive fallout from 94 of the above ground Nevada tests reached 46 states,

Scott: What kind of warnings, if at all, were your families given?

Dixon: We weren’t given warnings. You know what we got? We got a little booklet that told us, some of you may say, geiger counters are going crazy these days, don’t let it bother you.

In the early 1980s more than 1100 plaintiffs sued the US government for negligence and won, but the government appealed and that judgment was reversed.

A series of Congressional investigations in the 1970s and 1980s concluded the US government knew of the risks but failed to warn residents living downwind.

In 1990, the radiation exposure compensation act was passed providing small amounts of compensation to a very limited group of people.

Scott: What does compensation look like

Dixon: Right now, $50,000, which does not even cover one chemo treatment, and they might say it costs too much, but you know who can’t afford it? We can’t afford it. We cannot afford it and our government has spent trillions of dollars literally since the manhattan project on nuclear weapons. They plan to spend $1.5 trillion more, and yet they say that that sliver, sliver of an amount we’re asking for is not right.

Over the summer, the law that authorizes and funds the compensation expired, meaning for now, no new claims can be paid.

Scott: Do you have any confidence, any faith that in the end someone will do what you see as right?

Greenwood: I don’t know whether they will, they haven’t so far.

Scott: Do you feel a sense of urgency?

Greenwood: Definitely.

Dixon: Definitely, the clocks not only ticking on getting something through, it’s ticking on our lives.

Scott: Is it hard for you to talk about this without getting a little emotional?

Dixon: It’s amazing how many times we’ll tell this and how many times we end up crying. Sometimes you steal yourself, but it’s hard. It’s hard when you’ve got people, but you are watching still suffer when you’ve promised people. I’ll make sure I carry this story forward because our country tends to have a very short attention span and they’ll forget about it.

Some say, that’s because it is easier, and cheaper to bury this past, instead of correcting it.

Scott: Do you think that it’s easier for the government to sit back a bit on this because it’s generational?

Dickson: They’re waiting for everybody to die.

Greenwood: I heard that over and over meetings I was in, these people would look and say, they’re just waiting for all of us to die, and while we wait, while there are delays, more people keep dying and we’re going to get to a point where no one’s left, no one’s left.

For Full Measure, I’m Scott Thuman in Washington

Watch video here.