Western governors want nuclear testing compensation expanded

Atmospheric nuclear weapons testing exposed more states and more people to radiation fallout and resulting cancers and other diseases than the federal government currently recognizes, Western governors said.

The Western Governors' Association on Friday sent letters to the U.S. Senate and U.S. House urging passage of proposed changes to a law involving "downwinders."

The U.S. between 1945 and 1992 conducted more than 1,000 nuclear weapons tests, nearly 200 in the atmosphere. Most were conducted in Western states or islands in the Pacific Ocean.

FILE- In this July 14, 2015, file image from video, Tina Cordova talks of her late father, Anastacio Cordova, in her Albuquerque, N.M., home. Cordova believes her father, who died in 2013 after suffering from multiple bouts of cancer, was affected by the atomic bomb Trinity Test in New Mexico since he lived in nearby Tularosa, N.M. as a child. The Western Governors' Association said Friday, Oct. 11, 2019, atmospheric nuclear weapons testing exposed more states and more people to radiation fallout and resulting cancers and other diseases than the federal government recognizes. (AP PhotoRussell Contreras, File)

The changes to the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act would add all of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, and include for the first time downwinders in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and the island territory of Guam.

The changes would also include increasing the maximum payment to $150,000 for someone filing a claim. Compensation currently ranges from lump sums of $100,000 for uranium workers to $50,000 for those who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site.

The new legislation called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019 would also include those who lived downwind of the 1945 Trinity Test in New Mexico's Tularosa Basin.

FILE - This July 16, 1945, file photo, shows the mushroom cloud of the first atomic explosion at Trinity Test Site near Alamagordo, N.M. The Western Governors' Association said Friday, Oct. 11, 2019, atmospheric nuclear weapons testing exposed more states and more people to radiation fallout and resulting cancers and other diseases than the federal government recognizes. (AP PhotoFile)

"We encourage you to expeditiously consider and approve this important legislation, which acknowledges that nuclear weapons production and testing has had much broader impacts than currently recognized by statute," the governors wrote in letters to each chamber signed by Oregon Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum.

Tona Henderson is the director of Idaho Downwinders, which for years has sought the inclusion of Idaho in the compensation program.

She said 14 of her 38 family members in the Emmett area in southwestern Idaho have died of cancer, the youngest at 15, and many others have survived that and other diseases. She has battled cancer and other health issues.

During the nuclear testing, farmers would go out to their fields on summer mornings to find them covered with dust carried on the wind from the nuclear blasts, she said. The dust occurred so often, she said, it picked up the name "summer frost."

"I don't know why we weren't included," said Henderson, who was an infant growing up on her parents' dairy farm during the tail end of the atmospheric testing in the early 1960s. "Other than the government didn't want to admit that they did something wrong."

The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in New Mexico is another group seeking recognition as having been adversely affected by nuclear testing.

"We don't wonder when we're going to get cancer, we wonder when," said Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and co-founder of the Tularosa consortium.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was first passed in 1990 as an alternative to costly litigation to ensure the federal government met its financial responsibilities to workers who became sick as a result of the radiation hazards of their jobs.

The proposed legislation on the Senate side was introduced earlier this year by U.S. Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho. Crapo for years has sought the inclusion of Idaho as a downwind state.

Besides downwinders, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act also includes money for workers made sick during uranium ore mining and milling activities that took place in 11 states in the Western U.S.

Downwinders should receive equal compensation as offered those workers, Henderson said.

"Energy workers knew what they were signing up for," she said. "We didn't know what was happening to us."

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.

While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.

At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”

Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.

He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.

In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.

The Wall Street Journal first reported about the U.S. intelligence determination.

FILE - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny gestures while speaking during his interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 18, 2017. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, in February of 2024. An official says the U.S. intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death or directly ordered it. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)