Nevada lawmakers back bill to aid veterans exposed at test range

The Tonopah Test Range in Nye County could become the linchpin in a new federal effort to help veterans who say they were exposed to radiation and toxic materials while serving in secrecy at the Nevada Test and Training Range.

Sen. Jacky Rosen, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Rep. Susie Lee and Rep. Mark Amodei introduced the Sergeant Dave Crete FORGOTTEN Veterans Act on June 3, aiming to force the Defense Department to classify the NTTR and other exposure sites as contaminated, identify everyone who served there since the first nuclear test in 1951, create a process for veterans to prove that service, and share the records with the Department of Veterans Affairs so claims can move forward.

That matters in Nye County because the NTTR includes the Tonopah Test Range, part of a Cold War landscape that stretches across southern Nevada and has long been tied to classified military work. Rosen’s office said the NTTR and the former Nevada Test Site carried out more than 900 explosive nuclear weapons tests and other dangerous activities from the 1950s through the 1990s.

The central policy gap is that the VA does not currently treat NTTR service as a blanket radiation-risk activity. Veterans often must produce detailed proof, including radiation dose estimates, to connect illnesses to their service, even when records are incomplete, lost or destroyed. A May 27 roundtable at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas highlighted that problem, with advocates and lawmakers saying many aging veterans have had to fight the government for recognition while battling disease.

Lee said the burden has been excessive, calling it “embarrassing” that veterans are made to work so hard to access care. Rosen has said the men and women who served there were unwittingly exposed and abandoned by the government for too long.

The bill would affect veterans who served on the range, including airmen, security forces and aircraft maintainers. Dave Crete, the chairman of The Invisible Enemy and the veteran advocate the bill is named after, entered the NTTR in 1983 as an Air Force security forces airman and later developed cancer and other ailments he believes were caused by exposure there. Crete has said thousands of service members may have been exposed.

The issue has already reached Congress before. In October 2025, the Senate-passed defense bill included NTTR contamination and records provisions, signaling momentum behind the idea that Nevada’s test-range veterans should not have to prove what the government kept secret from them for decades.