The first two decades 1973-1993

Throughout most of the 1960s, the decade before the one in which EPRI was established, the electric utility industry grew at a rate that was virtually unequaled in its then less-than-100-year history. Sustained economic and population expansion fueled a rapidly rising demand for electricity. Some utilities were experiencing demand growth of as much as 8% a year and were building new and bigger power plants to keep up. Massive, multiunit coal-fired plants were being built near mines, with highvoltage transmission lines carrying the power back to urban centers. Gas turbines were brought into New York harbor on barges to help meet power demand in the country's largest metropolitan area. The commercial use of nuclear power for generating electricity was fast appproaching, after the success of a series of small, government-funded demonstration reactors