Metaphor through the meat grinder

I was watching an old newsreel about nuclear weapons testing (from here in the Prelinger Archives) and noticed the narrator, using that universal upbeat newsreel tone of voice (was newsreel narrator an easy job, since you always used the same tone of voice for every subject, or was it a very hard job, since what kind of freak uses the same style of speech for fashion news and Nazi atrocities?), said, “The familiar mushroom-shaped cloud snakes skyward, hurling the atom’s deadly radiation high into the heavens.” They used “deadly radiation” and “heavens” in the same sentence. I’m not sure the two terms ought to be used together.