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Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear energy actually had the most extreme growth adoption curve of every energy source ever. Even faster then the adoption of coal or oil in the centuries before.

It was totally crazy, but then form basically one year to the next, it totally flat lined. You can guess when that was.

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The problem with nuclear power is that it's a hard decision to reverse. Once we make it, we have to stand by it to the end. We can't reduce funding on nuclear power and expect it to end well.

Nuclear was in trouble before Three Mile Island. Costs were exploding and electricity demand growth suddenly stopped.

While this is true, the regulatory chances after Three Mile Island and the general changing attitude towards nuclear made it impossible for the industry to adjust to the changing market.

Nuclear growth was so incredibly fast at first that it was maybe a bit unsustainable, but going from the fastest ever growing energy to total stagnation for 40 years is a difficult thing to explain.

The regulatory change with the biggest impact on nuclear occurred before TMI. It was the Calvert Cliffs decision, a SCOTUS case that nuclear power plants were not exempt from the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Cliffs_Coordinating_Co...

While this had the largest short term impact, I would argue the larger cultural, organisational, regulatory approches had the more fundamental long-term effect.

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