A FTER THE second world war, America’s new Atomic Energy Commission was on the hunt for a remote site where engineers could work out how to turn the raw power contained in a nuclear bomb into electricity. They settled on the desert shrubland of south-eastern Idaho. Towns in the area fell over themselves to compete for the headquarters of the reactor test site, seeing it as a catalyst for growth. Idaho Falls, then a city of 19,000, launched what it called “the party plan”. Locals wooed officials at lunches, cocktail parties and on city tours. The guest lists included women who were “as winsome as possible” to make the town seem attractive to the (male) engineer in charge of choosing.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Going nuclear”
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