By SUSAN GORDON, lARRY KING AND LINDA EVERS This time next July, we are going to lose a key federal program, and you hardly even hear about it. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) will come to an end on July 11, 2022. We need our elected representatives in Congress to extend and expand that program before it runs out. Congress first passed RECA in 1990. The idea was to help cover health costs for many of the communities exposed to nuclear radiation through the U.S. nuclear weapons programs. Those programs began in the 1940s, most notably here in New Mexico, with the first nuclear test in 1945. Above-ground nuclear tests would continue until 1962 an,d to support the thousands of new nuclear weapons being built, an expansive uranium mining and processing program began in our state and elsewhere.