For more than three decades no commercial nuclear project in the U.S.
was ordered that was not later canceled. Recently, the groundbreaking for
the National Enrichment Facility in New Mexico in August, 2006, the
issuance of the first “Early Site Permit” for a nuclear power
plant in March, 2007, and a massive lobbying campaign in Washington, D.C.
have been signs that the nuclear power industry still dreams of a
renaissance. Nuclear power's momentum was broken in the late 1970s by
several factors, including a grassroots anti-nuclear movement that won
tightened regulations, thus raising the costs of nuclear power plant
construction and operation. Editorial cartoons in the daily press of that
time are only one of a number of fields of cartooning that document this
nuclear power controversy, and not the one that affords the closest look.
Both the nuclear industry and participants in the anti-nuclear movement
published entire comic books to explain their views of nuclear power.
Besides these special-purpose comic books, editorial cartoonists in the
weekly press and representations of nuclear power in mass entertainment
provide further bodies of visual evidence for understanding the steps by
which nuclear power won and lost the “public acceptance” that
it now tries to win back.