Atoms for Peace Meets Nuclear Stewardship: Evolving Public Communication Strategies by Civilian-Use Next-Generation Nuclear Energy Projects

This project advances scholarship at the intersection of nuclear discourse and sociotechnical imaginaries. Specifically, the close analysis of the rhetoric of the NEXT Lab at Abilene Christian University demonstrates that this nuclear rhetoric draws upon the sociotechnical logic and technological futurism of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” while oversaturating it with images and logics of Christian missional rhetoric. Additionally, the NEXT Lab rhetoric refracts the logic and rhetoric of atomic containment with its stated intent to be transparent. Finally, the deixis of the NEXT Lab rhetoric highlights how the use of space, color, images, and quotations create a joyful and invitational tone for visitors, scientists, and politicians to engage in the nuclear sociotechnical imaginaries of the twenty-first century.The NEXT Lab is a proposed molten salt reactor research and test reactor at a small private, Christian college in a small town in West Texas. The innovative use of rhetoric, which was prompted by the rhetorical exigencies of this specific environment, illustrate how nuclear sociotechnical imaginaries may evolve. Even though not all nuclear communicators will want to invoke the religious-based themes of NEXT Lab, four reflective questions can serve as a rhetorical toolkit for the development of nuclear communication as leaders seek to re-imagine the U.S. sociotechnical imaginaries for the national and global needs of the twenty-first century.