Believe it or not, nuclear power influencers aren’t a new idea

Stephen Mihm, Tribune News Service

Nuclear power, long derided as too expensive and too dangerous, is having a bit of a comeback, thanks in part to a new generation of influencers who have embraced the atom (seemingly, without question). A recent New York Times profile of influencer Isabelle Boemeke — who likes to pose with uranium pellets and other atomic swag — neatly captured our nation’s newfound enthusiasm for nuclear power. Ah, youth. If an earlier generation of enthusiasts were still alive, they would almost certainly retort: “Hold my coffee.” That’s because the original atomic culture they created puts to shame anything that our current crop of pro-nuclear pundits could ever produce — and a quick tour of that past suggests this latest revival is just as unlikely to pan out.

Though the comics and pulp fiction of the 1930s contained plenty of references to the “potential” of nuclear power, the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki mark the formal dawn of what became known as the “atomic age.” Despite this rather inauspicious beginning, a growing number of people hoped that this destructive power might be channeled toward more peaceful ends. Case in point: the cartoonist behind Blondie and Dagwood lent his artistic talents to the comic book Dagwood Splits the Atom, published in 1949. General Leslie Groves — the real-life military man who oversaw the Manhattan Project — helped craft the book, which envisioned an era of plentiful, cheap energy. Groves once stated: “No effort is too great for us to make in imparting the facts about atomic energy to the greatest number of people.” Facts, though, can often be boring. It was far better to focus on the more sensationalistic, fantastical nature of nuclear power. Which is why the 1940s and 1950s witnessed a remarkable focus on comic-book superheroes loosely inspired by the promise of nuclear power. Their ranks included the Atomic Thunderbolt, Atomic Man and Atoman, whose body, rapt readers learned, “generates atomic power.”

Atoman was fond of idealistic pronouncements. At the close of one issue, he declared: “Atomic power cannot belong to one man ... group of men ... or even one nation! It belongs to the whole world! My own power must be used to help all people ... regardless of race or creed or nationality.” However, such progressive declarations — made as the nation drifted toward McCarthyism — didn’t resonate. Instead, Atoman was quickly eclipsed by an improbable comic book duo who didn’t have a political agenda: Atomic Mouse and Atomic Rabbit. Both had been ordinary beings, minding their own business, but swallowing some U-235 pills (the mouse) and eating radioactive carrots (the rabbit) had turned them into superheroes. (Exposure to radiation would become the most common origin story for future superheroes, including the Hulk and Spiderman.)

Comics were but the beginning. The American obsession with the atom — and its promise of limitless, cheap power — generated a torrent of pop culture that could fairly be described as atomic kitsch. None of it made much of a distinction between the peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy. And Americans ate it up. Designers embraced the aesthetic, turning out consumer goods that riffed on atomic structures. There was the “Atomic Starburst,” which adorned a range of cups, saucers and bowls manufactured by Franciscan Ceramics. Or George Nelson’s Ball Clock, which became an icon of Midcentury modern design. Hollywood did its part, turning out a series of forgettable films about uranium mining. There was The Atomic Kid, Uranium Boom, Dig That Uranium and many more. Most featured forgettable plots, buxom blondes and promotional posters with cringeworthy tag lines. “How their Geiger counters click they meet those babes from the Badlands,” was the one for Dig That Uranium.

There was family-friendly fare, too. These included Uranium Rush, billed as “an exciting new electric game for the family,” along with science kits for kids, such as the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab, which came with its own collection of radioactive ores and a working Geiger counter. Toymaker Revell sold a scale model of the Westinghouse Atomic Power Plant, the nation’s first commercial reactor, when it opened in 1957. Atoms hit the airwaves, too. Little Caesar & the Red Callender Sextette released “Atomic Love” in 1953 — just one of many such songs from that decade. In “Atomic Baby,” Amos Milburn crooned about a woman or a nuclear reactor.

By the early 1960s, though, the country’s fascination abruptly ended with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and undercut the appeal of atomic novelties. So, too, would harrowing episodes such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl — to say nothing of fictional depictions of nuclear war like the movie The Day After, released in 1983.

Still, as the late Burt Reynolds once quipped, “If you hang on to things long enough, they get back into style.” Eight decades after the dawn of the atomic age, the enthusiasm that Boemeke and others have for nuclear power feels oddly familiar — tamer, perhaps, but no less naïve than the postwar dreams that once gripped the American imagination. After all, what seems cool and even cute today is likely to elicit as much fear as fascination tomorrow.