Cartooning and Nuclear Power: From Industry Advertising to Activist Uprising and Beyond

Abstract

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.