Sounds like a Silver Age tale.

I was reading this today and all I could think about was the many comic book origins that ran along these lines - sounds like something out of the X-Men:

Sharapova’s mother, Yelena, was pregnant with her only child when the plant in Ukraine exploded and spewed radioactive clouds over the western Soviet Union and northern Europe...


...Sharapova’s father, Yuri, and her mother fled the city of Gomel in Belarus — about 80 miles north of Chernobyl — shortly before she was born in Nyagan, Siberia.

Gomel was one of the areas most affected by radiation. Sharapova said she still has family there, including grandparents.