As a dev­as­tat­ed Japan con­tin­ues to strug­gle with the dam­age to its nuclear facil­i­ties, sev­er­al oth­er nations have begun recon­sid­er­ing their nuclear poli­cies. Ger­many, for exam­ple, has tem­porar­i­ly closed down sev­en aging nuclear reac­tors, and oth­er coun­tries (includ­ing Rus­sia, Chi­na, and the US) have announced checks of their own safe­ty stan­dards.

Cyn­ics might sug­gest that these announce­ments are cal­cu­lat­ed less to make sub­stan­tive changes than to calm a fright­ened pub­lic, and attempts to man­age per­cep­tions of the atom­’s volatile pow­ers are noth­ing new. They began imme­di­ate­ly after the bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. The video above, pro­duced by Gen­er­al Elec­tric in 1952, was one of many Atom­ic Ener­gy “PR films” designed to sway pub­lic opin­ion in favor of this prof­itable and pow­er­ful new ener­gy resource. (Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, GE built the Fukushi­ma reac­tor that’s now in deep trou­ble.)

A is for Atom was a huge hit — it won sev­er­al hon­ors, includ­ing a spe­cial prize at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val and a Mer­it Award from Scholas­tic Teacher. In some ways those hon­ors were deserved. The movie is a spright­ly car­toon with cheer­ful nar­ra­tion and expla­na­tions of some dif­fi­cult physics, even as it avoids any engage­ment with the dark sides of nuclear ener­gy. In fact, the whole mes­sage boils down to a reas­sur­ance that the atom­’s mas­sive poten­tial is all “with­in man’s com­mand.”

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.