ABSTRACT
The story of the atom in postwar America was grounded in hope, promise, and risk. There was hope that atomic weapons would insure national security. There was the promise of nuclear power to deliver an abundant source of energy. And there was the duel risk of war and environmental peril. Hope, promise, and risk weaved through history for the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. All three ideas never really marched hand in hand, but one or two seemed to take precedence over the others at different times and in different places. Yet we have never been without this trinity in Atomic Age America. From the end of World War II until the early 1950s, the Truman administration faced the question of how to integrate the atomic bomb, and then its hydrogen successor, into national security policy. The danger of war loomed large, despite the recent end to the most tortuous conflict in human history. Entwined in the security debate were dramatic revelations about atomic espionage that people believed directly produced Soviet successes in developing its own atomic weapons. Testing new atomic and hydrogen devices in the Pacific offered the first public glimpse of the threat of fallout. The “promise” of nuclear power wistfully discussed in the debates on whether to internationalize the atom remained largely an abstraction in the first postwar decade. In this period hope and risk trumped promise.
