Katherine Sullivan

achieve its unrealized energy goals this time around?

It's Sunday, May 10th.

I'm Katherine Sullivan for The Wall Street Journal.

This is USA 250, a podcast series connecting America's economic present to its past.

This is Episode 4, Nuclear Power's Reboot.

On August 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman made an announcement that would change the history of war and of science.

When we talk about the history of nuclear energy, it's impossible to disentangle it from nuclear weapons.

In 1945, the US became the first and only country to drop nuclear bombs in war.

These two bombs killed over 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It unleashed a level of annihilation never before seen.

The secretive Manhattan Project had developed the bomb.

It also fast-tracked our understanding of a new technology, nuclear fission, or the splitting apart of an atom's nucleus.

Sarah Roby is an associate professor at Idaho State University, where she studies the history of nuclear science and technology.

If nuclear technology was so powerful that it could destroy entire cities, could it also be harnessed to help power cities?

And if so, could it change the way the world got its energy?

In a facility in Idaho, scientists began testing different types of nuclear reactors.

One of those reactors generated the first nuclear electricity.

This small production proved conclusively that nuclear reactions could generate electricity.

The government needed to show people that this technology wasn't only useful in war.

It could be used for peace and prosperity, too.