alternatehistory.com

Back in the 1950s, there was a big debate in the US over whether government or private industry should take the lead in building nuclear power plants. This was in many ways a continuation of the debates over the Tennessee Valley Authority, with Democrats and unions lobbying for a government-owned nuclear power corporation set up on the same model. IOTL, the private power advocates won the debate, led by Chairman of the AEC Lewis Strauss, who at times seemed to prefer no atomic power to publicly-owned atomic power.

So, what if the public power advocates won? I'm imagining an approach along the lines of Britain's fleet of Magnox reactors: publicly-owned reactors intended to produce both electricity and plutonium for weapons. (That's about the only way atomic power could be remotely cost-effective in the US in this time period anyway.) What would it take for this happen, and what would the consequences be?
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