A Nuclear Nightmare

(11 of 11)

It is clear that the grounds of the long national debate over nuclear energy have now shifted drastically. For many years the foes of nuclear power, for all their protest rallies, "clamshell alliances" and sit-ins, were very much on the defensive. Their complaints about plant safety had lacked credibility; the exigencies of the nation's energy crisis were unarguable; the fragility and risk, to some degree inherent in many parts of an advanced industrial society, had a common-sense acceptance as inevitable. But the price of progress, like the price of anything, has a ceiling, and for the nuclear power industry, the radioactive gases drifting from Three Mile Island have undeniably raised the price—and public consciousness about the risks—of nuclear power. Just how high rests in large measure on how Pennsylvania's nightmare ends.