When Chatham House launched a two-year investigation into the global future of civil nuclear energy in 1999, it met with a quizzical response from some of those approached for input and advice.
By far the fastest growing of the major energy sources in the 1970s and 1980s, it was surely yesterday’s technology. There had been no fulfilled orders for new plants since the mid-1970s in the United States. With the exception of France, western Europe had turned its back on the technology, most extremely in Italy, which closed all its operating plants after a referendum following the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
