This article is mostly about Britain, but it also describes a more widespread anti-technology mindset.

Windmills are pretty if you are on holiday in Norfolk or Amsterdam. But how did we end up wanting them as a symbol of advanced modern society? How did we get from the Nuclear Age, where the successful application of a scientific breakthrough meant that people believed we never needed to worry about sources of energy running out, to the Wind Age, where we give ourselves over to the unpredictability of nature and look to little Denmark as a model?

Well, it wasn't because of Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl, or the other nuclear scares and accidents that still play heavily on our minds. What is surprising is how few such disasters there have been. There are legitimate concerns about the disposal of nuclear waste, but these are blown way out of proportion - this is a practical problem needing a solution, yet it tends to be discussed as an apocalypse in the making. What really killed the Nuclear Age was an explosion of self-doubt across the Western world, where we stopped trusting in science and politics and started believing in our own nightmares.

Nuclear power was intimately linked in the popular imagination with the terrifying threat of nuclear war laid it open, from the start, to a host of doubts and preoccupations that had very little to do with energy supply.

The nuclear weapon came to symbolise everything that radicals were supposed to hate in modern society: from war and patriarchy to money and non-vegetarianism.

The anti-nuclear demand was, simply, 'Stop'. Stop moving forward, and start asking why we need these power plants anyway. Stop, and ask what's more important - keeping safe, or better cheaper energy production.