The Oppenheimer story that won’t win Oscars

Tina Cordova lives in Albuquerque, about a two-hour drive from where the atomic bomb was developed. She is one of the “Downwinders,”" a term used to describe the communities who claim to have been affected by radiation from the Trinity Test. The test is the centrepiece of Christopher Nolan’s box office hit, Oppenheimer. It follows the physicist of the same name and his team of scientists and engineers.

Ms Cordova says the film reveals nothing of the legacy of the atomic bomb. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. A link between radiation exposure from the Trinity Test and cancer has not been proven conclusively. Ms Cordova has documented hundreds of families with high rates of illness.

One of them is Paul Pino who says the penny dropped when he attended a presentation about the radiation. The US government has established compensation funds for people in areas where tests happened in later years. New Mexico has not yet been included but that could now change. An extension to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is set to expire in June.

This week the Senate passed the bill in a bipartisan vote. It now goes to the House of Representatives. The film is viewed less negatively in Los Alamos, the secret city where Oppenheimer and his team carried out their work. Residents there, it’s not the history the film lays bare that’s being talked about but its impact on the economy.

Los Alamos is a place for the country’s best brains to free their imaginations and make scientific breakthroughs. The name of Oppenheimer is inescapable in the town. Many of the local residents of Los Alamos were also extras in the movie. Today, scientists still play a key role in making the components for nuclear warheads.

Los Alamos residents have the highest number of PhDs per capita in the country. As the US government updates its weapons, the lab has been ramping up production. The film has clearly been good for business - the bar sells T-shirts with images of Oppenheimer on them. Anti-war campaigners hold a weekend protest about the continuing work in Los Alamos.

Their leaflets decry the US using the lab there to renew a nuclear arms race. Ms Cordova hopes the buzz around the film will shine a light on the health risks. Without the people of New Mexico, there would have been no research project and no Oppenheimer movie, she says.

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