ABSTRACT
The future of the nuclear power industry depends crucially upon winning public acceptance. In many energy markets, nuclear power has suffered from slower growth rates in electricity demand since the mid-1970s. In some parts of the world, including the UK, it has experienced a reversal of the cost advantage over coal-fired power generation that seemed to exist from the mid-1960s. In the USA in particular the industry has had to cope with the growth of a regulatory framework of Byzantine complexity. The sheer speed of the West's take up of nuclear power in the decade from 1965 brought industrial difficulties which caused mistakes, failures, bad design and accidents. Most significant of all, however, has been the rise of public anti-nuclear power sentiment. In the UK, for example, polls indicate that 90 per cent of the respondents in representative samples of the population are against increasing the country's reliance on nuclear power to meet future energy needs.
