Plaintive congressional visits and emotional press conferences have turned to bittersweet victory celebrations for today’s long-neglected victims of WWII-era nuclear radiation in Missouri and beyond.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who led the charge to revive and expand the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) for those sickened by the nation’s Manhattan Project atomic bomb building and waste disposal, led a recent rally in St. Louis to herald its passage in the Big Beautiful Bill.

The law, which inexplicably was allowed by Congress to expire a year ago, provides much-needed health care aid for victims across the nation.

Missouri victims were never included in the original 1990 law, despite untold numbers of whom having been sickened from poorly buried radioactive waste in the St. Louis region through the decades.

Now they will be.

“Well, it was such a tremendous privilege to be there with so many Missourians who have fought for years to get some compensation and some truth from their government,” Hawley told The Heartlander of heading up the July 8 rally. 

“For years now, the federal government has poisoned Missourians by putting nuclear radiation into our soil, into our water and into our air and lying about it. And they said, ‘Oh, we didn’t do it. It wasn’t real.’ Now, in the last couple of years, they’ve finally admitted, ‘OK, yeah, actually.’ 

“They dumped nuclear waste into the water, into the soil, and it has poisoned tens of thousands of Missourians, probably hundreds of thousands, over the years. We finally now have gotten legislation that will compensate every Missourian who has gotten sick because of the government’s lies, because of the government’s negligence. 

“And not just Missourians. This will hold true for any American who has been sickened because of the government’s negligence when it comes to nuclear radiation.

“This is a huge victory for Missourians, especially. I mean, we were an epicenter of this nuclear radiation because of our uranium processing role in the Second World War and in the Cold War. So, this is huge, huge victory for the people of Missouri.”

Hawley isn’t sitting back and enjoying the accomplishment, in which he had to fight to get the bill into House legislation despite it passing the Senate twice – only to see it pulled back out by legislative leaders before its late-hour inclusion in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

Hawley Tuesday sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice “to ensure prompt implementation” of the revived and expanded RECA law.

“It is critical that the Department promptly renews its claims process and application,” he wrote, “given that prospective claimants have until December 31, 2027, to submit their paperwork. Timely processing of new claims is both feasible and imperative under the law, especially given the age and health of many claimants. …

“I will closely monitor the Department’s implementation of the law in the months ahead and respectfully request an update on the Department’s implementation progress by August 1, 2025. I stand ready to work with you and the Department to ensure a fair, efficient, and accessible claims process for new RECA claimants.”