detergent—all of which enable consumers to put their money where their mouths are, and to mitigate (or in some cases, believe they are mitigating) risk There can be no doubt that popular concerns about risk, whether individual or societal, are profoundly influencing virtually every industrial sector. The energy sector is no exception; however, it is in some respects unique, simply because energy is generally accepted as essential, in ways that no other industry can claim. This unique status, coupled with rate regulation, for many years insulated the energy industry from the market, with the result that it has been relatively slow to respond. Even so, environmental performance has today become a factor in market competition, as well as in regulatory requirements, for the energy industry. Natural gas is marketed as "cleaner," while oil heat is "safe and dependable." Hydroelectric generators "harness nature's power," nuclear energy is "renewable," and windmills are "natural." These kinds of characterizations of incumbent energy technologies, in effect, define the framework in which space solar power must compete. In other words, even assuming technological and economic parity with the incumbents, SSP must compare favorably in terms of risk A Changing Landscape: Lessons from Nuclear Power As they relate to choices about energy, these trends suggest an equation that has fundamentally changed since nuclear power first emerged as a commercially viable alternative to fossil fuels. This new industry was the direct beneficiary of post-war technology transfer, which has been officially advocated by the US government since 1949. By the mid-1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had joined forces with the Duquesne Light Company to build and operate Shippingport, the first commercial nuclear power station, applying technology developed for powering naval vessels. At the time, the primary arguments in favor of nuclear power were economic. Technological feasibility was a given (although origins in weapons development would subsequently prove a mixed blessing), and safety does not appear to have been widely questioned. Environmental effects—positive or otherwise—do not appear to have been a factor at all By the early 1970s, commercial nuclear power in the US had matured into a multi-billion-dollar industry, having outgrown its early reliance on government-sponsored research and development. The 1973 oil embargo added a political dimension ("energy independence") and a new urgency to the economic message, while raising public awareness of resource conservation. At the same time, however, numerous other factors coalesced to change the landscape, in ways that neither industry nor government had anticipated and that permanently changed Americans' relationship with both. The timing of the accident at Three Mile Island could not have been worse in terms of its impact on the nuclear industry. By 1979, institutions long trusted and presumed benign had become the object of close scrutiny and harsh skepticism "Question authority" had evolved from a watchword into a way of thinking, and translated into unprecedented demands for accountability and disclosure. Awareness of environmental impact and long-term health eflects—coupled with suspicion of "big business" - had put heavy industry under the spotlight, and the TMI accident served to confirm many Americans' worst fears about technology run amok
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