Already fear-mongering about nuclear

Well, what you say is true... BUT

There was already a recent, and very public, example of a genuinely awful and tragic situation which, if you want to visualize it, involved young women literally glowing in the dark and then dying horribly. Much of it seems like appalling naivety, with women spreading radium paint on their faces to see the glow after a day of actually placing radium paint in their mouths as part of their work. Look up the Radium Girls.

It's about radiation, not nuclear. Just like Spider Man having radioactive blood.
In the 1930s many people believed radium was a magical medicine. It was actually the radon gas, and people went to Radium Hot Springs (still very popular) and drank radioactive water.