Utilities Go Nuclear. In 1954 the government authorized private ownership of nuclear reactors as part of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative, paving the way for utility companies to build nuclear power plants. By the mid 1960s many had "gone nuclear," though the cost of building reactors had proved far more than the early hopes that they could provide power for pennies a day. There was some public opposition to the plants — after all, most Americans' sole experience with the power of the atom was the devastating bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In California residents demanded the cancellation of the planned Bodega Bay reactor, sited on a geological fault, after an earthquake disrupted construction. Inhabitants of New York City resisted the siting of a plant in that densely populated area.

Energy Independence.

Nevertheless, most people liked the idea of building atomic energy...