On Feb. 5, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia is set to expire. The end of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) would remove the final guardrails limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals — opening another door to a destabilizing arms race at a moment of global volatility. 

Nevada knows better than most what that future looks like.

For four decades, Nevada served as the epicenter of America’s nuclear weapons testing program, carrying out more than 900 nuclear tests. Among those, 100 atmospheric nuclear detonations from 1951-1962 created fallout that drifted across towns, poisoned water and soil and left generations of Nevadans with elevated cancer rates and chronic illness.

Nevada stands as a warning of what happens when our panic to compete in the nuclear weapons race blinds us from seeing the true human cost. 

Nuclear weapons have cast a long shadow on my family. My grandfather, a Navy medic during World War II, was one of the first American troops to enter Nagasaki, Japan, after the explosion of the atomic bomb on Aug. 9, 1945. Not only was he exposed to significant amounts of radiation, but what he saw — the deaths of countless women and children from radiation sickness — triggered a lifelong battle with PTSD and alcoholism. He died at 42. 

He never shared his experiences in Nagasaki with my grandmother or my mother. So when the film Oppenheimer came out in 2023, I began searching for surviving veterans who had been present in Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the bombs to help me understand what he had seen. I flew to Japan with my best friend, the Japanese American author Karin Tanabe, to see the sites of the bombs firsthand — a trip that inspired our 2025 PBS documentary, Atomic Echoes: Untold Stories from World War II.

The film explores themes of reconciliation and truth through interviews with American World War II veterans and Japanese survivors who have long carried the burden of silence and loss. Among them is 99-year-old Michas Ohnstad, who was assigned to a team of American and Japanese doctors performing autopsies on bomb victims in Hiroshima. Besides suffering multiple cancers throughout his life, Ohnstad still experiences severe post-traumatic stress disorder and nightmares 80 years later. Another survivor we interviewed, Dr. Masao Tomonaga, is Japan’s premier physician treating radiation-related illnesses. He explained to us that he continues to diagnose survivors with leukemia and multiple types of cancers every year. 

While we were in Las Vegas for a screening of the film, Karin and I took a sobering tour of the National Atomic Testing Museum, which sponsored the screening. We were able to understand how, on the American side, Nevada has borne the brunt of the consequences of the nuclear arms race. 

The specific danger of nuclear weapons is that radiation can be a slow killer. It can take years or even decades for cancers caused by exposure to develop. This is the problem thousands of surviving atomic veterans face today. Currently, the majority of their medical claims are denied because these veterans can’t “prove” the connection between their past radiation exposure and their current health problems. 

In July, Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) introduced legislation that would address this injustice. The Providing Radiation Exposed Servicemembers Undisputed Medical Eligibility (PRESUME) Act aims to remove bureaucratic hurdles for atomic veterans seeking Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits — most importantly, disability compensation for illnesses caused by radiation exposure. While the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act does compensate atomic veterans, it's a one-time payment and does not resolve the barriers they face when seeking long-term disability and medical care from the VA.

Justice and compensation for atomic veterans should not be controversial. As these men and women face aggressive cancers, respiratory disease and neurological decline, they are asked to produce evidence the government itself failed to collect.

I know all too well how the trauma from nuclear weapons reverberates across families and across generations. No one could save my grandfather from the impact, but it’s not too late to save so many others. 

The expiration of New START threatens to normalize a future in which nuclear weapons once again become tools of competition rather than instruments of last resort. If we fail to care for the veterans we thrust into harm’s way, we risk repeating history — not learning from it.

Victoria Kelly is the co-producer of the PBS documentary, Atomic Echoes: Untold Stories from World War II, and the author of three books of fiction and poetry, including Homefront, published by the University of Nevada Press.