ABSTRACT
Nuclear power was widely seen as a major alternative to expensive, politically unreliable and polluting energy sources. The promise of clean, abundant and inexpensive nuclear energy, however, now appears to be ephemeral. Throughout the West, nuclear power is an industry in crisis, if not collapse. This chapter examines the factors that have brought nuclear power to this point. The ideal typical pluralist model is characterized by a multiplicity of voluntary groups spanning a broad range of interests, all competing on a more-or-less equal basis for access to government decision makers and influence over public policy. The state has been intimately involved in the development of nuclear power from its inception, given its roots in the wartime Manhattan Project. The Federal Republic — of all the large industrial democracies of the West — is said to most closely approximate a corporatist style of policy making.
