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Dr. Ruth,
What was the context of the "too cheap to meter" quote?
One of my hobbies is collecting old books and articles on nuclear power. I
have never seen the "too cheap to meter" quote except in two contexts. One
context was the 1954 NY Times actual quote of Admiral Strauss, I have a
microfilm copy of that. In searching through magazines and newspapers from
1954, I have never found another written record of Admiral Strauss's
prediction. I have found three items from 1954 that countered Admiral
Strauss's prediction. One was a letter to the editor of the NY
Times from an engineer involved with municipal water supply. He pointed
out that disribution and conditioning costs made water too expensive to not
meter and that he believed the same would always be true of electricity.
The second was an editorial in the Sandusky, Ohio newspaper that asserted that
nuclear power would never be much cheaper than coal power because of the high
initial equipment and construction costs. The third was a speech in "Vital
Speeches" by an oil company executive who asserted that nuclear power would
always be more expensive than fossil fuels. Admiral Strauss's biographer,
Richard Pfau, wrote in "No Sacrifice to Great, The Life of Lewis L.
Strauss" that Strauss was talking about the potential of nuclear fusion
when he included the 1954 statement about the cost of electricity with several
other optimistic predictions about the future.
The other context began with the next mention of that quote
that I found in 1971, when Rodale Press published "Poisoned Power, The
Case Against Nuclear Power Plants", by John Goffman and Arthur
Tamplin. That book includes Appendix VI, in which US
Senator Mike Gravel addressed 19 questions about nuclear power on February 15,
1971. Question 17 included the following comment by Senator Gravel:
"Nuclear power, which was supposed to be 'too cheap to meter,' has turned
out to be the most expensive power we have". Senator Gravel did
not mention the source, date or originator of the quote. That is
typical when the quote is used in such a context. Often such
users vaguely attribute the quote to various, unnamed engineers, industry
representatives and planners, sometimes claiming that the quote was more recent
than 1971.
During the period from 1954 to 1971 much was written about the
costs of nuclear power. I have several examples of written statements
by various people familiar with the realities of nuclear power. They
all deal with the question of whether and when nuclear power might be
competitive with fossil-generated electric production. The best
example of such a discussion of costs is in the book, "On Nuclear Energy",
by Donald J. Hughes of Brookhaven National Laboratory, published in 1957 by
Harvard University Press with a forward by Lewis S. Strauss. In the
preface Dr. Hughes explains why the book was written: "In giving lectures
to a wide variety of lay groups, I have always been impressed with the real
eagerness of the listeners to learn something of nuclear energy, and their
willingness to put in a few hours of concentrated effort in the process."
"It was often suggested that the material of these lectures, if written down,
might find a wider audience and serve to increase the understanding of atomic
facts." On page 90, Dr. Hughes began a six-page discussio of "The
Economics of Nuclear Power". There is no way that anyone reading the
discussion could come away with the illusion that nuclear power would ever
be "too cheap to meter". Dr. Hughes stated that "The reactors being
built by large power companies such as the ones we have described will produce
electricity eventually in the range of about 7 to 9 mills per kilowatt
hour." In 1957 some of the more modern coal-burning plants
were producing power at about 6 mills per kilowatt hour.
Don Kosloff dkosloff1@msn.com
2910 Main Street, Perry OH 44081
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