nuclear weapons

The Missouri senator said concerns about cost killed earlier efforts to renew a program for people exposed to radioactive waste. Hawley hopes a new compromise with a lower mandatory spending price tag will finally break through.

Missouri lawmakers formed a new committee to document the effects of radioactive waste in the St. Louis region and other Missouri sites and to search for policy solutions.

The federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired on Friday, and there’s no word on whether the U.S. House will act to revive it. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley was leading an effort to expand the program to include Missouri and other states.

Kansas City musician Nate Hofer took his pedal steel guitar 30 feet down into an inter-continental ballistic missile silo to record a hopeful reminder that nuclear war is not inevitable.

Speaker Mike Johnson says after consulting with Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner, Republican leadership has decided not to hold a vote on a bill that would renew the program without adding new states.

Since last summer, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has been pushing for an expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include Missouri and other states where communities were harmed by nuclear bomb testing and waste.

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to spend more than $3 billion to expand its facilities in Kansas City, where workers produce non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons.

A world-renowned ceramic artist educated in Kansas City has made a career of injecting activism into the delicate teapots he crafts. Richard Notkin recently returned to the Kansas City Art Institute to teach a masterclass in making art with meaning.

Veterans who helped test nuclear weapons are fighting to renew a 34-year-old law meant to help compensate for the long-term health effects of their work. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has spotlighted the issue in Missouri, where generations of people have been exposed to radioactive waste tied to the Manhattan project.

"The Day After" made use of 2,000 local extras alongside well-known actors of the time. The film's emotional impact made it into the pages of a presidential journal, and is widely credited for putting the brakes on the nuclear arms race.

The blockbuster "Oppenheimer" has renewed interest in the history of U.S. efforts to create atomic weapons during World War II. President Harry S. Truman, a native of the Kansas City area, never doubted his decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

As the war in Ukraine passes its one year mark, former Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst says sending U.S. weapons can speed the end of the fighting.