By Peter Rickwood, Vienna, 2 January 2026

Journalists who broke US rules barring them from Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after destruction of the Japanese cities by US atom bombs in 1945 brought more than eyewitness accounts of devastation to their readers. Their reporting contested rigorous efforts to suppress knowledge about the effects of radiation from atomic weapons.

The contribution of William Burchett, John Hersey, Charles Loeb, Leslie Nakamura, and George Weller at the dawn of the nuclear age to the understanding of its perils, and the perfidy of William L. Lawrence, are the subject of ‘Bombshell’, a ground breaking documentary that premiered on PBS on January 6. Viewers outside the US can view it on Vimeo. The password is Bombshell_DCP!.

In 1945, memories of revulsion at the use of poison gas in World War One still lingered in the US driving official efforts to sanitise the use of atomic weapons and divorce the celebrated new wonder weapon from chemical warfare.  

The accumulation of reporting—Hersey’s 1946 ‘Hiroshima’ importantly—informed public opinion thwarting government propaganda, censorship and co-option of the press—today’s disinformation regime—to suppress understanding of the suffering caused by the bombing.

Ben Loeterman, the film’s writer and director says, “Bombshell has much to teach us, and the press, about reporting peace and security issues around the world today…”

In the decades since the events ‘Bombshell’ documents the devastating power and numbers of nuclear weapons have spiralled dramatically. By 1986 to 70,000, at the height of the Cold War—mostly in possession of the US and USSR. At their Reykjavik summit in 1986, spurred on by the nuclear ‘freeze’ movement, the US and USSR premiers Gorbachev and Reagan came close to agreeing to abolish nuclear weapons. The current inventory world-wide is just over 12,000, the legacy of arms control measures in the 1990s.

As public anxiety about nuclear weapons waned after the end of the Cold War when the view set in that their threat had been contained, press interest in the nuclear file also declined.

Flirtation

Except, 2026 opens onto a turbulent era—flirtation with nuclear weapons again as relations between possessors sours, threats of renewed arms racing, anxiety about the impact of emerging technologies on nuclear stability, and the fate of New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia, in doubt.

Until recently the jaundiced view of a hard-nosed journalist was that no one had died in a nuclear explosion since 1945; deterrence keeps the peace, and besides, there’s climate change—yes, credit may be running out—and AI to cause sleepless nights.

But the risk of ‘what could go wrong’ among the possessors of nuclear weapons, the immediacy of nuclear devastation, outweighs all others. And since the end of the ‘90s the reputation of the press in paying attention to nuclear matters has not gone unblemished.

It stumbled disastrously by republishing false claims the US made about nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When the US withdrew in 2019 from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) there was little press interest in its swords to ploughshares achievements—abandoned missile bases transformed into tourist airports, former cruise missile silos turned into sheep pens.

However, it also served notice about the future of nuclear arms control agreements—the likelihood of their imminent total eclipse while the bargaining table where discussion in their mutual interest among states about managing new technologies, the threats they pose, stands silent.

On the obverse side of the nuclear coin modernisation of the US arsenal, with a price tag expected to exceed two trillion dollars, is underway, China is reportedly expanding its relatively modest nuclear stockpile as Russia unveils new delivery systems and weapons. The costs are unknown.

Patriarchy

Nuclear tensions show no sign of abating. Nor is the public completely indifferent. A YouGov poll conducted in the US in October and November 2025 found almost half its respondents believe the US is likely to enter a nuclear war within the next 10 years.

Public hesitancy is not overlooked in the UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review urging a government PR campaign to convince the British people of the “necessity” of a nuclear arsenal, which may be expanded under the review.

Nonetheless, the most prevalent attitude towards nuclear weapons is indifference. So entrenched and removed from public scrutiny are nuclear weapons and the enterprises associated with them that consent by the public plays little part in deciding their role.

It adds a new dimension to the question ‘Bombshell’ poses about journalists challenging the right to know. How should a free press address the nuclear status quo? After all the nuclear regime operates as if it had borrowed patriarchal rules from the Medieval divine right of kings—without account, and a more recent addition—hiding from view to protect national security.

But the findings of two ongoing studies may assist in developing a response to the question. The World Health Organization is updating a 30-year-old study on the effects of nuclear weapons on public health and the environment.

Separately, the United Nations established an independent scientific panel at the end of 2024 to study the effects of nuclear war.

A dating service

In 2026, Atomic Reporters will continue its efforts to support journalists, professional and citizen, approach the subject with knowledge as we continue to follow a non-partisan agenda.

In essence we are a ‘dating service’ introducing journalists and specialists to each other, brokering evidence-based information, supporting the right to know and better reporting to inform the public and policy.

Reporting the subject in all its complexity is as daunting as finding the key to unlock Linear A, the ancient Minoan language yet to be deciphered. In responding to an Atomic Reporters Stanley Center poll in 2023, and subsequent comments, journalists expressed concern that their lack of knowledge of nuclear weapons and secrecy keeps them from covering the subject.

Still, there are incentives for journalists to show more interest. Through their frequently myopic eyes the subject of nuclear weapons constitutes a ‘good story’—hypocrisy, intrigue, cover-ups, a fire hose of public funding with little accounting for expenditure on weapons that in principle can never be used; all the while, a few fingers hovering over buttons that could lead to Armageddon; it  is worthy of more attention.

For those of us who follow the nuclear file, the 1980s movie ‘Back to the Future’ offers shorthand for current circumstances, or perhaps we’re in a repetitive loop like Groundhog Day. Either way the business of nuclear weapons is never done until it’s done.

American Experience Bombshell will stream for free simultaneously with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS app, available on iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO.  

In 2025 Atomic Reporters, with the support of the Stanley Center, organized side events during the World Congress of the International Press Institute in Vienna commemorating 75 years since its foundation. It also organized a workshop in The Hague with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), involving Syrian journalists, addressing disinformation and reporting the use of chemical weapons in the 14 years of Syria’s civil war. AR also provided journalism and storytelling training for young participants in the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs Youth Leadership Fund project.

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About the author:

Peter Rickwood, director and founder of Atomic Reporters, is a former Canadian journalist and press officer with the International Atomic Energy Agency. He also worked as media adviser for the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).

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Images:

Header: Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves (standing in uniform, center right), Chief of Manhattan Engineering District in which first atomic bomb was developed, and Dr. J. R. Oppenheimer (leaning forward with hat), Director of Los Alamos Atomic Bomb Project, and physicist at CA Technological Institute, view the base of the steel tower on which the first atomic bomb hung when tested near Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July. The intense heat of the bomb melted the tower and seared the surrounding sands into Jade Green Glasslike cinders. September 9, 1945. Credit: Bettman/ Getty Images

In article: People suffering burns received dabs of transformer oil brought from the nearby Hiroshima Electric Railway. The girl in the foreground, wearing a sailorstyle uniform with a triangular collar, and the girl to her left were second-year students at Hiroshima Girls’ Commercial School (then 13 years old) who experienced the atomic bombing at the Hiroshima Postal Savings Bureau in Senda-machi 1-chome, where they were mobilized to work, but survived. The boy second to the right of the police officer from the Ujina Police Station was a first-year student at Hiroshima Municipal Junior High School (then 12 years old) who experienced the atomic bombing in Koami-cho (now part of Naka Ward), where he was helping to demolish buildings to create fire lanes. It is believed he was on his way to his home in Danbarasuehiro-cho (now Danbara in Minami Ward), where he lived with his parents. He went missing and his remains were never found. (Distance from hypocenter 2200 meters.) Photo taken in August 1945, by Yoshito Matsushige, Chugoku Shimbun. Editorial use only, Commercial use not possible, Credit: Chugoku Shimbun/Kyodo News Images