The retreat would be a stunning setback for the Government and the nuclear-power industry, which is poised for a revival.

Penniless, Szymanski went to work as a consultant to the burgeoning nuclear-power industry, helping find and evaluate sites for reactors and related facilities.

The move will open a potential $60 billion market to the American nuclear-power industry.

Meanwhile, the Russian nuclear-power industry wants him to keep Iran's favor by making sure restrictions at Bushehr do not block covert nuclear cooperation.

Experts say similar limits helped spur the founding of the nuclear-power industry.

The nuclear-power industry was effectively created by the government in the nineteen-fifties, and probably could not exist today without government guarantees.

Then, inconveniently for the world but conveniently for the nuclear-power industry, a new truth intruded.

Despite a worldwide protest campaign, the first in a series of shipments of plutonium from Europe to Japan to supply the local nuclear-power industry is going ahead.

That appeared to contradict remarks this month by Russia's atomic energy minister, who said cooperation with Iran in developing its nuclear-power industry was ending.

He also headed a similar organization serving the nuclear-power industry, as well as serving as a consultant on insurance matters to the Federal Aviation Administration.