The Oppenheimer story that won't win Oscars

Science and culture 9 March, 2024 22:23

The success of the film Oppenheimer has shone a spotlight on the work done by scientists in New Mexico as they developed the first nuclear bomb. But 80 years later, some local people say their story remains untold.

"Both my great grandfathers had cancer, my two grandmothers had cancer, my father had three different cancers, my sister has cancer," Tina Cordova says mournfully as she flicks through an old family photo album in her living room.

"I've lost count of the aunts and uncles and cousins who've had cancer. And my family is not unique."

Ms Cordova lives in Albuquerque, about a two-hour drive from where the atomic bomb was developed.

She's one of the "Downwinders," a term used to describe the communities who claim to have been affected by radiation from the Trinity Test, which was the world's first detonation of a nuclear weapon in the New Mexican desert.

The test is the centrepiece of Christopher Nolan's box office hit, Oppenheimer, which follows the physicist of the same name and his team of scientists and engineers who rushed to develop this bomb.

The movie, which is expected to win more awards at the Oscars this Sunday, examines the moral struggles of the men and women who changed the world with the work they did in the desert under a cloak of secrecy.

A magnificent story of a tragic American genius

But Ms Cordova says the film reveals nothing of the legacy of the atomic bomb she says her family have been living with for generations.

The detonation is a memorable moment in the film, as scientists are handed dark glasses and gather on a breezy night to watch their theories and calculations become reality.

But carried on the wind, according to Ms Cordova, were unforeseen consequences.

"We firmly believe we have been over exposed to radiation during the Trinity bomb, and then also during the bombs that were detonated at Nevada," says Ms Cordova, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 39. Her 23-year-old niece has the same diagnosis.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. While a link between radiation exposure and cancer has not been proven conclusively, Ms Cordova has documented hundreds of families with high rates of illness across multiple generations.

One of them is Paul Pino who says the penny dropped when he attended Ms Cordova's presentation about the radiation several years ago. "It was a brutal realisation that came down on us like an avalanche," he recalls.

His family lived 35 miles from the Trinity Test location, and like Ms Cordova, several relatives have been wiped out from cancer. His brother died of stomach cancer and his mother of bone cancer. His sister has thyroid cancer, his daughter had skin cancer and two of his aunts had brain tumours.

The US government has established compensation funds for people in areas where tests happened in later years but New Mexico has not yet been included. That could now change.