Senate Votes To Compensate Victims Of ‘Oppenheimer’ Nuclear Test

LOADING ERROR LOADING WASHINGTON ― The Senate on Thursday approved a measure that would, for the first time, give health care benefits and compensation to communities impacted by the test of the first atomic nuclear bomb in New Mexico. “Millions of people across the country traveled to theaters this weekend to watch a blockbuster centered around this infamous day, but not enough people have focused on the collateral damage caused by our nation’s nuclear testing,” New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján said Thursday in a speech on the Senate floor. This aerial view of the atomic bomb testing site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, shows the shallow crater dug by the blast 300 feet around the tower from which the bomb hung. Working alongside Sen. Josh Hawley, Luján Hawley, who was spotted whipping his GOP colleagues to vote for the measure in the well of the Senate chamber, credited Nolan’s film for raising awareness to an issue that has affected people in his state who lived near a Manhattan Project nuclear processing facility. Luján said he hadn’t yet watched “Oppenheimer,” so he couldn’t weigh in as to its accuracy and its portrayal of how the nuclear testing affected the people of New Mexico.