The varying reactions to Three Mile Island and to the impending decontrol of the price of domestical- ly produced oil illuminate the shifting fault lines of American politics and provide a glimpse of what the ’80s are likely to offer in the way of ideological conflict.

Until Three Mile Island, root-and-branch opposition to the development of nuclear power had largely been confined to that left fringe of American politics where lingering countercultural anticorporatism reinforced a small-is-beautiful reverence for an unspoiled ecosystem. The passions animating the Clamshell, Abalone, and related “alliances” had little authentic appeal ...