PJ Vogt

Slowly at first, Oyster Creek powering parts of Jersey, Dresden 1 in Illinois, Yankee Row in Massachusetts.

But it takes off because in the 60s, America's electricity needs were skyrocketing.

Nuclear was part of the solution.

The big cost was building the plants themselves, but interest rates were low that decade.

Great time to finance construction.

By the late 60s, U.S.

utilities had ordered over 50 new nuclear reactors.

In the next decade, they would order another 196.

Everyone thought this was just the beginning.

The federal government forecast that by the year 2000, roughly half our grid would be nuclear powered.

There would be 1,000 nuclear reactors in America.

Of course, that's not what happened.

Here's Rachel.

So wait, so before there's sort of public catastrophes, the problem is the upfront cost of building a reactor is really high.

And so if electricity costs aren't high, and because the reactors themselves hadn't been getting cheaper because people were sort of

And what was their theory for, like, why did they think more energy was necessarily bad then?

So you had higher interest rates on construction, but really what you had were environmental activists who were beginning to change the public's mind.

In the 70s, nuclear sentiment was beginning to soften.

What was really taking off was the idea that you would not want a nuclear power plant in your backyard.

Folk musicians were getting very into this.