By the late 1970s , nuclear power suffered a remarkable international destabilization , as it was faced with economic difficulties and widespread public opposition , coming to a head with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 , and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 , both of which adversely affected the nuclear power industry for decades thereafter . A cover story in the February 11 , 1985 , issue of '' Forbes magazine '' commented on the overall management of the nuclear power program in the United States : The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history , a disaster on a monumental scale … only the blind , or the biased , can now think that the money has been well spent . It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry , for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible . So , in a period just over 30 years , the early dramatic rise of nuclear power went into equally meteoric reverse . With no other energy technology has there been a conjunction of such rapid and revolutionary international emergence , followed so quickly by equally transformative demise
Three Mile Island accident
Three Mile Island accident
Atomic Age