Top prosecutors back compensation for those sickened by US nuclear weapons testing
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and 13 other top prosecutors from around the U.S. are throwing their support behind efforts to compensate people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing.
The Democratic officials sent a letter Wednesday to congressional leaders, saying “it’s time for the federal government to give back to those who sacrificed so much.”
The letter refers to the estimated half a million people who lived within a 150-mile (240-kilometer) radius of the Trinity Test site in southern New Mexico, where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. It also pointed to thousands of people in Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana and Guam who currently are not eligible under the existing compensation program.
