When the Sandia Atomic Museum opened at Kirtland Air Force Base in 1969, it displayed the most not-secret nuclear weaponry that the Cold War would allow, including an atomic torpedo. Its gift shop once sold civil defense manuals and atom bomb earrings.

The Museum was closed after 9/11 -- a victim of War on Terror security -- and in 2002 it moved to the Museum Row section of Albuquerque, and changed its name to the National Atomic Museum. That worked well -- until the Museum brought in a nuclear payload-ready Redstone rocket and stood it by the front door. Some citizens felt that downtown Albuquerque was no place for a 68-foot-tall atomic hell-candle.

Now the museum is moving again, to a 12-acre parcel of land back outside of the Air Force Base. It's changing its name again as well, to The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. The renaming "wasn't done for political correctness," we were told by director Jim Walther. "It was done to better describe the new museum's attempt to meet its whole mission."

Jim feels that the old Atomic Museum "didn't meet its mission very well because it was mostly about nuclear weapons." That, of course, is why we LIKED the old Museum, but Jim promised that the bombs and the rockets won't be going away -- they'll just be joined by exhibits on nuclear medicine, nuclear power, uranium mining, and other civilian and industrial topics. The Atomic Museum is, after all, America's only official atomic museum -- by decree of Congress -- and Jim sees that as a mandate "to carefully present a very balanced point of view."

"We're the Nordstrom of nuclear science!" he added cheerily, meaning that his museum will do its best to satisfy almost everybody.

Jim pledged that the Museum's copies of the first atomic bombs, Fat Man and Little Boy, will be kept on display. So will the Redstone rocket -- and the atomic torpedo. So, too, will most of the big exhibits that were left behind when the museum was moved downtown, such as an atomic cannon and the B-52 that dropped the last American H-bomb in 1962.

There will be an "atomic cars" exhibit as well, although they're not atomic-POWERED cars. They were just used to drive Manhattan Project scientists around in the desert, and one, a Plymouth, carried the plutonium core for the first A-bomb to the Trinity site. Does that Plymouth glow in the dark? Will it be displayed inside a ring of Geiger counters?

We weren't quick enough to ask those questions of Jim, but we were relieved to hear that the old Atomic Museum, while changing into what he called "a credible institution," isn't burying all of its commie-blasting hardware like so much unwanted nuclear waste.

The museum plans to make its move in March 2009. Jim hinted that it could sure use another $2 million in donations, just to make certain that the atomic cannon and the B-52 are up in time for the ribbon-cutting.

[02/24/2008]