Bill Allows Payments to Fallout Victims, Uranium Miners

President Bush on Monday signed a bill authorizing payments of up to $100,000 to people who may have developed cancer because of nuclear testing or uranium mining in Western states during the Cold War years.

“These payments fairly resolve the claims of persons present at the test site and of downwind residents, as well as claims of uranium miners,” Bush said in a statement. He signed the measure during a campaign appearance here.

The United States conducted more than 200 atomic tests in the open air in both the South Pacific and in Nevada.

“Atmospheric testing of atomic devices--important to national security during the darkest days of the Cold War--ended in 1963” when the United States joined the Limited Test Ban Treaty, Bush said.

The bill authorizes $100 million for a Radiation Exposure Trust Fund. Money would have to be appropriated in a separate bill.

The bill provides compensation for people who developed cancer during certain time periods, and:

--Spent one or two years, depending on the type of cancer, in downwind areas of Nevada, Arizona or Utah affected by nuclear tests conducted between 1951 and 1958, or between June and July in 1962.

--Or mined uranium in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming or Utah between 1947 and 1971.