ST. LOUIS–Missouri U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt reintroduced federal legislation Friday that would reauthorize a trust fund that pays victims of nuclear radiation and would make people in certain St. Louis-area ZIP codes eligible for reimbursement of medical bills.
The previous Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired last spring, although the federal government has continued to pay out claims filed before June of last year. Legislation that would extend and expand it twice passed the Senate but failed to reach a House vote in 2024. House leadership balked at the earlier projected costs of the measure. Hawley then negotiated with Speaker Mike Johnson’s office on a compromise that would have capped mandatory expenditures, but that bill also never made it to the floor.
The reintroduction had been expected but comes just days after the state of Missouri wrote the Environmental Protection Agency, asking the agency to take over the Bridgeton landfill over new concerns that nuclear radiation may have reached the site from the adjacent West Lake Landfill…