ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the involvement of additional political groups in nuclear energy policy-making--i.e., the macropolitical sector--and shows how subsystem procedures were eventually overcome. Yet as the events unfolded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, opposition to nuclear power increased in numbers and strength. Many assume that environmentalists have led the assault on nuclear power; however, they are relative newcomers to the debate. Minnesota and the anti-nuclear groups had lost an important decision, as Northern States Power Company's Monticello nuclear plant was phased into their electrical grid in 1972. By 1973 the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy decided to do something about the growing public uproar over nuclear power, and they scheduled public hearings on the safety of nuclear power reactors. After a number of legal battles with the Atomic Energy Commission, the union finally won a victory in the United States Court of Appeals, only to have it overturned in 1959 by the United States Supreme Court.
