The nuclear industry

Purpose – The national governments of the European Union (EU) are finding it increasingly difficult to provide their populations with cheap and reliable sources of electricity. There is a highly controversial technology available within the EU which could overcome this problem – nuclear generated electricity. The purpose of this article is to question the extent to which it is possible to reconcile the views of those citizens who object to the use of nuclear electricity with views of those who support the use of nuclear electricity as a competitive, sustainable and secure electricity supply within an open and competitive European energy market.Design/methodology/approach – This article adopts an inter‐disciplinary approach to the analysis of the issues.Findings – Political, economic and environmental pressures are combining to constrain the opportunities for national governments to enable citizens’ preferences with regard to the nuclear sector to be maintained. What is argued in the article is that all th...