Tracing the Radioactivist Landscape

Most of the public interpretation of nuclear technologies occurs in the places where large-scale facilities involved in, first, the Manhattan project and, later, the growth of both nuclear weapons and nuclear power have been located. These interpretive efforts are important and worthwhile, particularly as remediation efforts by the Department of Energy have often razed historic structures and other physical testaments to the nuclear landscape. But where else might we look? Where might we situate our interpretive work, and what other stories might we tell? I suggest that we think of these energy stories not as nuclear stories or atomic stories—terms that emphasize the scientific, technological, and military dimensions of nuclear energy—but as stories of radioactivity and radioactivism. Reframing our preservationist, interpretive, and commemorative work in this way both enlarges the field of what counts as a nuclear energy site or story and invites us to pay attention to a wider swath of people, especially the activists who resisted the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the expansion of nuclear power.