NH #682: Ugly July 16 Nuclear Anniversaries: Trinity Bomb Test, Church Rock Uranium Tailings Pond Disaster
Annual walk to commemorate Church Rock uranium tailings pond disaster on Navajo Nation land – from 2019. Site of the mine and tailings pond in the background.
This Week’s Featured Interviews:
Trinity Downwinders Advocating for Justice – Tina Cordova:
Trinity Downwinder Tina Cordova grew up in her family home in the Tularosa Basin, 40 miles from the explosion of the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. A cancer survivor like so many in her community, in 2005, she co-founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. She and her community have been working for compensation for New Mexico atomic downwinders for the past 15 years.
Links:
- Video created by Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in 2020.
and the need for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA)
- Trinity: “The most significant hazard of the entire Manhattan Project” – Kitty Tucker/Robert Alvarez research and article on infant mortality rates around the Trinity test site caused by radiation exposure. From the articler: “New Mexico residents were neither warned before the 1945 Trinity blast, informed of health hazards afterward, nor evacuated before, during, or after the test. Exposure rates in public areas from the world’s first nuclear explosion were measured at levels 10,000- times higher than currently allowed.” – U.S. Centers for Disease Control
Church Rock Uranium Tailings Pond Spill Disaster
It’s been 42 years since the July 16, 1979 uranium tailings pond spill/disaster that contaminated Navajo Nation land, adding to the radiation burden already there from abandoned uranium mines. Two brief interviews from Nuclear Hotseat #423 from July 23, 2019, where Nuclear Hotseat producer/host Libbe HaLevy covered the 40th anniversary events.
- Edith Hood grew up in the Red Water Pond Road Community, on land which had her living between two uranium mines and just down the road from the 1979 tailings pond spill. Edith worked at a different mine than the UNC facility that had the accident, but faced all of the same dangers.
- Terracita Keyanna has lived her entire life in the Red Water Pond Road Community on Navajo Nation. She was not even born when the Church Rock uranium spill happened… but that did not stop her being exposed to uranium mining waste from what was released and deposited by the spill.
between two uranium mines and just down the road from the
site of the Church Rock uranium tailings spill
