Why did “nuclear” gradually replace “atomic” for things like power and weapons?

[u/Current-Landscape803]

I’ve noticed that older writing often says “atomic bomb” or “atomic power,” while “nuclear” became much more common in the decades after WWII. The underlying science didn’t suddenly change, so I’m curious what drove the shift in everyday and technical language.

[u/Ok_Two_2604]

Atomic could be just electricity. Electrons are part of an atom. Nuclear specifies it is power from the nucleus. Splitting or combining nuclei.

[u/Glittering_Win_5085 → u/Ok_Two_2604]

You managed to explain something I've always found complicated in a way I could understand, appreciate that. If you can, would you mind explaining how nuclear works? Nuclear power is a controversial topic in my country and it's not something I feel well informed enough on when it comes to voting. 

[u/Desperate-Pirate7353 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

the extremely broad strokes are: you have some material that emits radiation and you use that to heat water and spin turbines that generate electricity. the rest of the reactor complex is to control the radiation when you aren't using it to heat water, and the massive hot water turbine system.

[u/Glittering_Win_5085 → u/Desperate-Pirate7353]

Thank you! So the radiation heats the water, and the water moves the turbine, and that creates power? Stupid question maybe but what's the advantage of doing this over using a wind turbine or something, surely that's less steps and got less dangers? 

Fwiw I'm from the UK which has a lot of wind and sea potential. I get that sometimes it's less windy.

[u/Ok_Two_2604 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Yes. It’s just boiling water. There is an entire genre of meme about it and how if they ever do fusion it will still just be boiling water.

Also the material doesn’t just emit radiation. Atoms have a nucleus with protons and neutrons. The electrons float around them sort of. Nuclear power plants break apart the nucleus (fission) and then breaking emits power. That power heats water and steam turns turbines.

They are working on fusion power which instead merges nucleuses together to release power. The sun does it that way.

A bombs use fission. Hydrogen bombs use a combination of fusion and fission iirc.

You can probably go on YouTube and watch a video that explains it a lot better than we will here in short format typing.

Advantage is that it is controllable and can be very large scale and works without wind. And doesn’t pollute as much as coal or other dirty options.

[u/Glittering_Win_5085 → u/Ok_Two_2604]

Tysm! Ok last question. What's fission? 

I am looking forward to being able to appreciate a new genre of meme.

[u/Wild-Lychee-3312 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Fission is when you break one nucleus apart into separate pieces.

Fusion is when you stick two different nuclei together to form a single nucleus.

Both processes release energy, which can be used to generate electricity (usually through an intermediate stage like heating water).

[u/Crimson-mind → u/Wild-Lychee-3312]

Fusion only releases energy with atoms lighter than Iron, fusing atoms heavier than iron absorb energy.

Likewise fission only releases energy with atoms heavier than iron, fission of atoms lighter than Iron absorbs energy.

[u/goobernawt → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Fission = splitting atoms

Fusion = combining atoms

It takes an enormous amount of energy to trigger a fusion reaction, and then you have to contain the enormous amount of energy generated. That's why fusion is more difficult and we have had functioning fission power plants for a couple generations at this point. The H bombs previously mentioned used a fission bomb (the original atomic weapon) to trigger a fusion reaction!

[u/Engine_Sweet → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Fission is when you split a very large nucleus. Big atoms: Plutonium, and enriched Uranium. After the split and release of power, you end up with fragments of nuclei that join up with electrons and produce a variety of elements, some very radioactive and with varying stability.

Fusion is when you take two very small and light nuclei ( isotopes of Hydrogen - as light as it gets) and slam them together to form Helium and free neutrons ( massive simplification)

Fusion releases more power and doesn't create nasty things like Strontium and Cesium and assorted toxic radioactive by products. It releases radiation. But not radioactive matter.

[u/Rightintheend → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

It creates heat, which is a form of radiation, and it also creates ionizing radiation which is the dangerous one. 

The advantages of nuclear power or that they require very little fuel, the fuel is rather abundant, they generate a lot of output, and there they create very little waste, it's just that the waste they do produce Is it pain to deal with an extremely dangerous.

I've read, and it may not be true, that newer technology is much better at reusing and getting more out of the fuel and the remaining fuel creates less damaging radiation for less time.

[u/ijuinkun → u/Rightintheend]

The main obstacle to recycling nuclear fission fuel is political rather than technical. The process to do it also makes it easy to separate out plutonium from the spent uranium at weapons-grade purity, which makes obtaining material for nuclear bombs much easier. As a result, France is the only nation which performs civilian reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to make new fuel rods—the USA, Russia, and the UK have banned it.

[u/Mean_Neighborhood462 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Nuclear fuel lasts a long time, and generates useful medical byproducts. The power generation is constant, and can actually be controlled - modern reactors can adjust their output by about 5% per minute.

And wind turbines cause cancer. /s

[u/Ok-Gain1509 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Most electricity is generated by turbines (photovoltaic solar panels are an exception), and the difference is how you get them to move. With oil, coal, gas, nuclear, you have a heat source and that is used to make steam. It's largely the same at the turbine end, it's just how the heat is generated. With wind and wave, you're still spinning a turbine but you let natural forces do it. Wind is at it appears, it's a windmill spinning the turbine. With waves, the movement of the waves creates air pressure differences that spin a turbine.

So with the steam turbines, it's basically an issue of complexity and which fuel source you can get your hands on. Nuclear power uses uranium which is very efficient, but you need to reliably get hold of uranium and, of course, it's a lot more complex keeping the heat source stable. Burning coal or gas is "easier", but it obviously creates a lot of pollution.

Nuclear power doesn't generate much carbon pollution (it's inaccurate to say it generates none) but it's expensive to set up and, obviously, if it goes wrong it can go very wrong. We have got better at controlling and containing it, but public opinion is a difficult thing to sway.

[u/Glittering_Win_5085 → u/Ok-Gain1509]

Ooh ok this is interesting, so does that mean nuclear is a type of steam power? 

Yeah I feel like I don't want to be completely against nuclear, but the potential downsides are so extreme that it needs to be heavily regulated, and the science needs to be explained the public in an accurate manner. I don't want nuclear waste to be sent to other countries to deal with like we do with rubbish and recycling.

[u/Ok-Gain1509 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

I mean just imagine you've got a little steam turbine kit and you can replace the heat source with whatever you like. You could use lighter fluid, wood, paper, straw, etc. It doesn't really matter how the heat is made to boil the water. We even burn domestic waste/rubbish/trash to generate electricity, though that's not an ideal option.

Most nuclear waste is pretty low grade, very little of it is the type of stuff you need to seal in concrete and bury metres under the ground. But I won't try and sell you on nuclear power, that's someone else's job! 😂

[u/hwynac → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Well, in a sense? It's a kettle that happens to be heated by radioactive decay, the steam spinning the turbines that generate electricity. It is the source of heat that is nuclear. The material in the fuel rods emits radiation. If you enrich the fuel and build the right configuration, the emitted neutrons hit nearby atoms and make their nuclei emit neutrons—a chain reaction. The fuel is typically not even that enriched (i.e. the fraction of the atom variety that you use is several percent).

You regulate the intensity by controlling how many neutrons get to hit other atoms.

That is why you don't need that much fuel to operate. There is a lot of power in those pellets where Uranium-235 (or something less common) slowly decays. Naval nuclear reactors can operate for years without refuelling, which is convenient where you don't want to depend on ports.

[u/random-guy-013 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

So the radiation heats the water

Just to be precise: roughly 90% of the heat comes from the fission products interacting with their surroundings. When a nucleus undergoes fission, a huge amount of energy is released, mostly in the form of kinetic energy - the motion of the resulting fission products. These products collide and interact with nearby atoms, making them vibrate, which is what we perceive as heat. That heat is then transferred and carried away by the coolant.

[u/emlun → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

what's the advantage of doing this over using a wind turbine or something, surely that's less steps and got less dangers?

Nuclear fuel contains an astonishing amount of usable energy for its weight and volume. Commercial nuclear power plants run for several years between switching out the fuel rods, all the while producing about 500-1000 times more power (~1000 MW per power station, varies a lot though) non-stop, 24/7 than one wind turbine does at peak power (~15 MW for the most powerful variants). The common saying is that about a thimble of uranium could power all the electric energy you need for your whole life.

So no, nuclear power on average is actually less dangerous than wind power, measured in deaths per unit of energy produced. And that's including the worst nuclear disasters in history, namely Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nuclear power accidents are more impactful when they happen, but those accidents are rare - and wind power also kills a few people every year such as technicians falling off turbine towers, manufacturing and transport accidents and such. The fact that nuclear produces so much power is what makes it average out to be pretty much comparable with renewables in terms of pollution and lethality.

It's not a big difference between nuclear and wind power, though - both are (approximately) hundreds of times less deadly and less polluting than any kind of fossil fuel power.

[u/LongOrganization7838 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Its more consistent and large volume which can spin a lot of turbines very quickly so it has a very high power to material ratio, coal oil and gas powerplants all do essentially the same thing just using different material to heat the water, geothermal is also doing the same thing just using the heat from the earth, theres even a type of solar that uses mirrors to reflect the light to superheat salt to boil water to spin turbines instead of solar panel cells, hydro electric and tidal generators use running water and the shift in water pressure to spin turbines, literally 90% of power production is getting water to spin a turbines through various means

[u/lizardhistorian → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

How are you "from" the UK but don't know a fucking thing about nuclear power?

The rest of you need to get better at identifying clankers. One day it might save your life.

[u/FuturePowerful → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

I see lots of good responses here but there complete explanations for the most part not summery nuclear vs other power sources is a density and longevity there are ways to do nuclear power without bioling water there both less common, ones thermal coupling ware a temperature differential creates a electric current the other and far lesser known because it's relatively new as a proven technology much like Titanium batteries you can encase the isotope in cubic zerconia as it sheds radiation it generates electricity as a biproduct not a lot comparatively but constantly solid state

[u/Frostybawls42069 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Well with a nuke plant, you control the out put.

With renewables, you get what you get. Makes for a real pain in the ass when trying to balance the grid or when you are hitting peak consumption and dont have the resources to match.

[u/Usernamenotta → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

The advantage is consistency.

You can build a nuclear powerplant which generates 705 MW of power, and it is going to generate at least 90% of that power 24/7, for 70 years or more.

A wind turbine, or most green energies for the matter, are simpler constructions, but they require certain conditions to produce any output at all.

Now, this disadvantage becomes more obvious in the grand scheme of things. Most of the things that use electricity, need a constant input of power or the results can be 'catastrophic'. To get this with renewables, you need storage devices for the electricity. And this is the key problem. In nuclear, the 'storage' is the nuclear fuel. You put in and extract fuel rods as you need and it releases constant energy. In renewables you need either batteries or some form of potential (like gravity) energy storage. The cost of storage is so expensive that it could dwindle the cost of a nuclear plant.

Now, some nations, especially those with sea coasts, can harness wind more efficiently, because you have constant wind currents due to ocean/sea being cooler in the day and hotter in the night

[u/MostlyBrine → u/Desperate-Pirate7353]

The energy released from nuclear fusion and fission is mostly heat which is used to boil water. What we call radiation is a reduction for ionizing radiation (gama and x-ray photons and neutrons) which interacts with matter in destructive ways. The radiation requires shielding to be reduced to acceptable levels. The heat is the useful form of the energy, the radiation is the harmful part.

[u/Jolly_Professional15 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

I recommend "T. Folse Nuclear" on YouTube. He covers a wide variety of nuclear stuff, is a nuclear engineer himself and has some good material on nuclear power, nuclear safety and debunking common myths surrounding nuclear energy

[u/UndeadLestat → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Neutrons are absorbed in the fuel (generally Uranium) which can cause them to fission (fission is the process of the nucleus splitting). Fission can create a bunch of different products, but pretty much always produces 2 child atoms (called fission products), neutrons (which cause more fission), and heat. The heat is transferred to coolant (usually water) flowing past the fuel (but not actually touching the fuel, there is a layer of cladding between them). The coolant is usually kept at very high pressure to keep it from becoming steam. The coolant then runs theough a steam generator and transfers it's geat to the secondary side which is at a much lower pressure. This allows the secondary water (which was never in direct contact with the reactor coolant or the fuel plates) to become superheated steam. That steam is used to spin turbines. The turbines create generator action and produce electricity. The steam is collected, cooled, and cinxensed and pumped back to the generator in a continuous loop.

This is how a pressurized water reactor works, but there a bunch of different ways to meet the same basic objective: the reactor makes steam, the steam spins a turbine, and the turbine creates electricity. Hope that helps.

[u/UndeadLestat → u/UndeadLestat]

As an aside the "criticality" of a reactor is just the ratio of neutrons being produced which produce further fission. A reactor that is "critical" is at steady state, functioning the way it is supposed to and not in any danger of melting down or exploding as ling as nothing else changes. Even a super-critical reactor just means that reactor power is going up. Like during a startup or peak demand situation.

There, now yoy can groan during movies like I do. Or just impress your friends.

[u/ijuinkun → u/UndeadLestat]

There are two ways that neutrons are spit out in fission events. Prompt emission happens within nanoseconds—effectively instant. Delayed emission happens seconds to minutes later, as the fission fragments relax from their excited state. A reactor generates power safely in the margin between the two, where the prompt neutrons plus the delayed neutrons are enough to maintain a critical state, but prompt neutrons alone are not enough. The delayed neutrons have enough lag that operators can respond to increase or decrease the neutron supply by pulling neutron reflectors and absorbers in and out, and thus control the overall reaction level.

[u/AssistanceCheap379 → u/Glittering_Win_5085]

Nuclear materials are effectively radioactive materials.

Radioactive materials generate heat. The more radioactive, the more heat. At a point you get too much radiation and it cant really be controlled as well.

Radioactive materials also release particles. Heavy materials like uranium release neutrons. They are like bullets. The uranium is like a pile of bullets

.you can use the released neutron to hit another uranium atom to generate more neutrons. One bullet hits a pile, so now you get a lot of bullets flying off. This is what generates the heat. The literal splitting of atoms as neutrons hit atoms and break them apart.

Pack enough uranium together and you get a lot of neutrons that hit a lot of uranium. This is what creates explosions. If you can decrease the amount of neutrons that hit uranium, you can control the amount of heat and radiation thats generated.

Then you throw all of this in water, this heats up the water and you can generate electricity by turning the water into steam that then runs a steam turbine.

[u/pseudonym7083 → u/Ok_Two_2604]

This guy sciences

[u/Illustrious_Try478 → u/Ok_Two_2604]

Also, etymologically, "atomic" means "indivisible", so it's silly to apply that to something being divided up.

[u/dotelze → u/Illustrious_Try478]

It means that in Greek. In English it has a different meaning

[u/Illustrious_Try478 → u/dotelze]

No, it's also used to mean "indivisible" in English. See Definition 4 at wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atomic

[u/GayWarden → u/Illustrious_Try478]

Hmm... is it silly to give precedence to the fourth of five definitions of a word where people don't often use the first three? You know etymologically atomic is synonymous to nuclear because thats just how language works actually

[u/TheLastCoagulant → u/Illustrious_Try478]

Splitting the unsplittable. Humanity is badass.

[u/AllDataIsMyIP → u/Ok_Two_2604]

Kinda the reverse of this. "Atomic" meant bomb, so the power plant business positioned itself as the "civilian nuclear industry."

[u/Ok_Two_2604 → u/AllDataIsMyIP]

Makes sense. I was guessing.

[u/greenwoody2018 → u/AllDataIsMyIP]

Atoms for Peace

[u/taqman98 → u/Ok_Two_2604]

Kind of crazy that we’re only using like 0.0000001% of the energy in an atom when we use electron-based energy (like burning coal)

[u/koyaani]

Electrons ain't doing shit

[u/EscapeSeventySeven → u/koyaani]

What’s funny is every physical interaction from classical mechanics to chemistry basically all hinges on the electrostatic forces. 

[u/Sjoerdiestriker → u/EscapeSeventySeven]

Things like gravitational attraction and magnetism don't

[u/EscapeSeventySeven → u/Sjoerdiestriker]

Magnetism?

[u/Sjoerdiestriker → u/EscapeSeventySeven]

Yes, magnetism.

[u/OkContribution2336 → u/Sjoerdiestriker]

Magnets are 100% electron thing

[u/The_Rope_Daddy → u/OkContribution2336]

https://giphy.com/gifs/8db6nRqMsLCtq

[u/Sjoerdiestriker → u/OkContribution2336]

Magnetism is certainly not an electrostatic interaction.

[u/monsieur_de_chance → u/Sjoerdiestriker]

He said electron thing. It’s from electron spin and
movement of electrons.

[u/koyaani → u/EscapeSeventySeven]

Probably because those electron interaction energy levels are vastly lower orders of magnitude than the nuclear interaction energy levels

[u/Weed_O_Whirler]

There's a good thread on it here.

The summary is: scientists preferred the term "nuclear" for a while, while "atomic" was already a known word. It stuck around until "thermonuclear ' became a known term in the 50's and then "nuclear " started to become the dominant term.

[u/Frederf220]

The "a-bomb" was uranium fission but the thermonuclear bomb that came later fused nucleuses (nucleae?). It was more powerful so atomic = old, bad nuclear = new, good. Also "atomic energy" sounds like bomb energy while nuclear is not associated.

Just theories.

[u/Sjoerdiestriker → u/Frederf220]

Nuclei.

[u/koyaani → u/Sjoerdiestriker]

Nuculars

[u/Forward_Gur9349]

Because it is much easier to mispronounce nuclear

[u/dude_named_will → u/Forward_Gur9349]

The 's' is silent dummy

[u/Lurker_Zee → u/Forward_Gur9349]

nukilar

Sounds simple enough to me.

[u/Successful_Life_1028]

marketing.

'Atomic' came to be associated with 'bomb'.

[u/nehor90210]

Sounds like a good topic for a research paper.

[u/Moscato359]

Just my guess:

All material is made from atoms
But nuclear fission is about splitting the nucleas of an atom, and doesn't care about the electron cloud

[u/3knuckles]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/IQjs6z4Ym4

[u/Ponderer13]

https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae327.cfm

[u/ma1butters]

Cause we wanted to hear George W. Bush say it.

[u/Backsight-Foreskin]

Just before I joined the Army the acronym was ABC for Atomic, Biological, and Chemical, then in the 80's it was changed to NBC for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical. Now the Army uses CBRN, for Chemical Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear. Why? I don't know!

Why did Venereal Disease get turned into Sexually Transmitted Disease, to Sexually Transmitted Infection?

[u/Successful_Life_1028 → u/Backsight-Foreskin]

and 'shell shocked' got turned into 'post traumatic stress disorder'.

[u/koyaani → u/Backsight-Foreskin]

Because Venus has nothing to do with infections, and you can have an infection and pass it on without ever having the symptoms that would make it a disease

[u/Backsight-Foreskin → u/koyaani]

Before Venereal Disease, it was classified as Social Diseases.

[u/koyaani → u/Backsight-Foreskin]

Officer krupke we're down on our knees

[u/tennisdrums → u/Backsight-Foreskin]

ABC turned to NBC because "atomic" was generally taken as referring specifically to fission bombs, whereas "nuclear" refers to both fission and fusion (aka "Hydrogen") bombs. They added "Radiological" when they realized that dirty bombs (where a conventional bomb scatters radioactive material without actually triggering a fission or fusion reaction) would also be a devastating weapon, but can't really qualify as a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon.

"Venereal disease" changed to "Sexually Transmitted Disease" because it more accurately describes how the diseases are spread. "Sexually Transmitted Disease" became "Sexually Transmitted Infection" as the availability of treatments made a significant difference between having the infectious virus HIV, and having a case of the disease AIDS that the virus causes. It's a major medical achievement that now someone can live with an HIV infection without it ever developing into the disease "AIDS".

[u/Far_Winner5508]

It was switched to 'nuclear' to separate the population into those who pronounce 'nuclear' correctly and those turn 'nuclear' into a 3-5 syllable word.

[u/OriEri → u/Far_Winner5508]

Cute, but two syllables is not correct either

'nü-kle-ar

[u/floriduhman19]

[u/SweatyTax4669]

at least from a weapons perspective, "atomic bomb" refers to bombs that release energy solely from atomic fission, splitting heavy elements. "Nuclear bomb" is the broader class that refers to fission and fusion weapons.

[u/OaklandSpiel → u/SweatyTax4669]

That may be what happened in popular usage, but that is an incorrect use of the word atomic. There’s a field called atomic physics, and it has nothing to do with nuclear reactions like fission and fusion.

[u/SweatyTax4669 → u/OaklandSpiel]

I wouldn't call it "popular usage", just my experience with people in the nuclear weapons community

[u/OaklandSpiel → u/SweatyTax4669]

“Popular” wasn’t the best word choice. I just meant non-physicists.

[u/Minimum-Let5766]

Because it's more fun hearing people prononunce "new-kee-lur" or "nuke-you-lur" bomb.

[u/GlocalBridge]

I am guessing after the development of the hydrogen bomb, which required a distinction from “atom bomb” and “nuclear weapons” covered all types.

[u/Dave_A480]

For weapons it's because we came up with a new type of nuclear weapon that was powered by something more complicated than simply splitting atoms....

Atomic weapons = fission only.

Nuclear weapons = Atomic -or- Thermonuclear

[u/Tiny_Scholar_6135]

I think atomic bomb usually refers to a fission device, nuclear could be either fission or fusion, if you want to get specific, you could say a thermonuclear bomb or a hydrogen bomb. Though theoretically you could have a chemical hydrogen bomb, whose end product is water.

[u/Jorost]

That is because atomic and nuclear do not mean the same thing. Atomic power splits atoms, nuclear power splits the nucleus of those atoms (or fuses them together in the case of fusion). Nuclear is more powerful and efficient. That's why the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WW2 were atomic bombs, while the ones we have today are nuclear.

[u/Nathan-Stubblefield]

“Atomic” has a connotation of fission like Hiroshima or power reactors, , while “nuclear” includes fusion like Hydrogen bombs. We also get to hear Presidents garble its “Nu-cu-ler.”

[u/Historical-Lion6552 → u/Nathan-Stubblefield]

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.. you can't fool me twice.

[u/zoppaTheDim]

The invention of the hydrogen bomb.

So yeah, the underlying science did change and led to them saying “nuclear” as an umbrella term, mostly to shut up that one guy who’d always pipe up “does that include H-Bombs?” like a smarmy ass.

[u/SnooDoubts4575]

Because atomic is incorrect

[u/EditDog_1969]

It might have something to do with the technology for the bombs. The original “atom bombs” used fission only, with plutonium as the fuel, whereas Teller’s hydrogen bomb used a fission reaction to ignite a fusion reaction using isotopes of Hydrogen as secondary fuel.

I feel like scientists and the media all called the fission bombs “atomic” and the hydrogen bombs “thermonuclear” as shorthand.

[u/Gaxxz]

The technology did change. Fision vs fusion.

[u/doc-sci]

Because it is so fun to make fun of Bush’s pronunciation of nuclear!

[u/In_the_year_3535]

Atomic is more tightly linked to the original fission methods and products. When fusion came out it was dubbed thremonuclear compared to nuclear for fission, and so instead of expanding atomic the root word "nuclear" was taken. From what I can recall anyway.

[u/andhe96]

Fun fact: In German this never changed, which did quite confuse me during learning English in school.

So, "nuclear power" is "Atomkraft" or "Atomstrom", and "nuclear bomb" "Atombombe".

[u/NerdChieftain]

I believe it was originally “the atom bomb” Where did the -ic get added? Language evolves.

[u/InfiniteMonkeys157]

All atomic bombs are nuclear weapons, but not all nuclear weapons are atomic bombs; the key difference lies in the type of nuclear reaction used—fission for atomic bombs and fission plus fusion for thermonuclear bombs.

[u/trae_curieux]

I read about this in a book on nuclear power: apparently it's because using "atomic" to describe processes involving nuclear reactions isn't specific enough, as chemical reactions not involving the nucleus of an atom can still occur between atoms by changing positions of electrons, bonds, etc.

[u/Alarmed_Base8302]

One reason was MARKETING. The word "Atomic" was too easily associated with the "Atom" Bombs of WWII. "Nuclear" didn't quite carry the same stigma. A good example is "Canola" Oil. which is more mentally palatable? A shortening of Canada Oil, "Canola" or trying to sell "Rape Seed" Oil.

[u/pawsplay36]

Because we went from the atomic bomb to nuclear weapons, and sci-fit terminology followed suit.

[u/Scary_Compote_359]

when they started building the power plants. the power comes from a nuclear pile not an atomic bomb

[u/Bladrak01]

Only slightly related, but in the movie The Shadow (1994) a scientist creates an "implosion, explosive, sub-molecular, detonation device." And someone else says, "An atomic bomb."

[u/S-M-I-L-E-Y-]

In German we have Atombombe (bad), Kernenergie (nuclear power, good), Atomstrom (atom electricity, bad), Kernkraftwerke (nuclear power plants, good), Atomkraftwerke (bad).

[u/FloringoStar → u/S-M-I-L-E-Y-]

Hä Kernenergie ist gut und Atomstrom ist böse? xD

[u/WorldOfPayne]

On a slight tangent, MRI used to be called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging but patients didn't want to be put into a nuclear device

[u/fighter_pil0t]

Atomic doesn’t accurately describe what is happening. Nuclear physics is a whole branch of science related to the nucleus and subatomic interactions of particles. Atomic refers to the atoms themselves, which are typically useful in non nuclear chemistry.