Senate Approves Expansion of Fund for Nuclear Waste Exposure Victims

The Senate on Thursday passed bipartisan legislation that would significantly expand a law allowing victims of government-caused nuclear contamination who developed cancer and other serious illnesses to receive federal compensation.

The 69-to-30 vote buoyed long-held hopes that the federal government would take further steps to make amends to anyone sickened by the legacy of the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

The bill would overhaul a law passed more than two decades ago with an exceedingly narrow scope, meant to compensate those who participated in or were present for aboveground atomic bomb testing, a hallmark of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, or uranium miners who worked between 1942 and 1971.

But the writers of that initial statute excluded large constituencies of those affected by the testing — people known as “downwinders” — including in large swaths of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. They also left out altogether communities in areas such as Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Guam.

The legislation, spearheaded by Senators Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, would not only seek to remedy those omissions, but it would also broaden it substantially beyond Cold War-era victims to others who have been harmed by the aftereffects in the decades since. The law is scheduled to expire in June unless Congress acts before then to renew it.

“This is a moral issue,” Mr. Hawley said. “The government exposed these good Americans to nuclear radiation without their consent, and usually, without any support. Now the government needs to make it right, and that is what this program is for. That is why the reauthorization update is absolutely necessary.”