Opinion: A History of Reckless Atomic Testing

While what goes on throughout the gray, lifeless halls of the Los Alamos National Laboratory is largely shrouded in mystery—the horrors of the lasting environmental impact left behind from decades of reckless nuclear tests are no secret to the thousands of locals. The fear of World War II launched the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos deep in the heart of New Mexico; the beginning of a nuclear arms race that defined the United States for two generations. But while the destruction abroad that followed the Project’s apparent success was showcased for the world to see, the spread of diseases resulting from radiation poisoning on America’s homefront was almost entirely ignored for nearly half a century.

“Apathetic” would be one way to describe the United States government’s response to reports of this poisoning. “Criminal,” however, would be far more accurate.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) of 1990 sought to repay downwind citizens who fell ill in the decades following WWII and Cold War tests. On the surface, The Act still appears to be little more than a halfhearted attempt at apology for irreparable harm caused by the testing. The fine print, however, reveals that describing the act as halfhearted is far too generous. Even after distributing over $2 billion in financial reparations, the Act failed to include compensation or those in areas in New Mexico that were far closer to the largest test site, Trinity, and ignored research that showed how radiation damage from the tests extended incredibly farther than the initial estimates that established the parameters for the RECA. “Since the law was passed, studies and fallout reconstructions have suggested that the health impacts of the nuclear tests likely extend to areas as far away as Idaho, Montana and Guam. Residents in those far-flung locales have provided vivid testimonies of glowing dust, strange maladies befalling livestock, and cancer clusters ravaging whole families,” writes Aria Alamalhodaei for High Country News, nearly 30 years after the RECA was passed.

The Act failed to conduct the necessary research into how radiation may seep into groundwater and spread invisibly to the countless agrarian communities scattered across some hundreds of miles away from sites like Trinity and Los Alamos. Political gridlock regarding the expansion of RECA to include payments to victims of poisoning in far-away areas occurred as it became clear that there was great uncertainty as to just how far the radiation had spread. Yet, the dedication that lawmakers and military actors exercised when it came time to grant reparations to countless communities afflicted by reckless action did not remotely parallel the fervor with which they enacted the bomb testing in the first place. RECA’s failure in the face of moderate uncertainty reflects the United States government’s history of abusing its own people without any kind of adequate apology.

Many citizens, additionally, claim that the government is waiting for the radioactive trail to go cold; in other words, waiting for victims in the area to die off. A 2005 review of RECA found that the government can only do so much research: “‘attendant policy decisions must come from the larger body of citizenry’ and ‘applying this new scientific knowledge may require additional societal value-based decisions.’” Placing the burden of fixing the fatal flaws of decades-old secret government actions on citizens is not just criminal, but it’s admittedly laughable considering the way in which many of the test sites had so carelessly dealt with their waste for decades.

A 2003 piece from Laura Paskus in High Country News illustrated how local officials and community members in New Mexico were bringing some of the questionable actions of local nuclear laboratory workers to light. “In the former plutonium-processing area along Los Alamos Canyon, for example, waste was stored in flimsy containers. When these were found to have corroded and leaked into the soil, the area was simply "paved over," according to a 1978 lab report,” writes Paskus in “New Mexico goes head to head with a nuclear juggernaut.” In the early 1980s, the state also found plutonium “hot spots” near a hiking trail in the relative vicinity of the Los Alamos facility, the lab elected to “vacuum up” soil in the area in question.

In the years following the RECA officials in New Mexico and surrounding states have worked to transform sites like Los Alamos into renewable energy plants; areas of remote, dry desert home to 100+ degree heat presents promise for success in wind and solar energy production. “Project planners envision 325 turbines spinning wind into power and generating up to 260 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply 260,000 households,” wrote Jane Braxton Little for HCN in 2001, as she detailed the future plans for a test site in Nevada. “Promoters hope new research projects will replace a past of science dedicated to destruction with science dedicated to renewal…they’re off to a good start.” Even despite this attempted transformation, locals expressed dissatisfaction with various other sites’ return to production in the wake of the United States military’s Middle East-related nuclear panic in the early 2000s.

The apathy with which many of these dangerous materials was handled is incredibly disappointing, to say the least. In contrast with the loads of detail and evidence that the RECA later demanded in order to properly deliver reparations, this level of care is nothing short of abysmal—frankly, it is criminal. So while, yes, they’ve now begun to clean up the areas with a somewhat admirable level of attention, it’s far too little far too late.

In order to protect its interests and save themselves from embarrassment in the public eye, the United States government picks and chooses the situations in which they decide to exercise caution. Rarely do their choices ever consider the wellbeing of citizens uninvolved with their work.

This piece was written for an environmental history class at the UO this term in which we were challenged to examine pieces from Denver-based "High Country News" regarding a specific issue that spans multiple decades.

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Sources:

Alamalhodaei, Aria. “The fallout of uncertainty in nuclear communities.” High Country News, Undark. Published August 2, 2019. https://www.hcn.org/articles/nuclear-energy-the-fallout-of-uncertainty-in-nuclear-test-communities

Paskus, Laura. “New Mexico goes head to head with a nuclear juggernaut.” High Country News. Published November 24, 2003. https://www.hcn.org/issues/263/14393

Little, Jane Braxton. “The greening of the Nevada Test Site.” High Country News. Published July 2, 2001. https://www.hcn.org/issues/206/10616