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Re: stop the madness
Jack,
What Admiral Strauss said was not a promise by anyone in the "nuclear
industry", it was not even a promise by him and it wasn't about nuclear
fission. At the time it was made, there was substantial definitive
information repeatedly presented to the public that indicated, without a
shadow of a doubt, that electricity from nuclear power would never be "too
cheap to meter". In 1957, Admiral Strauss even endorsed such realistic
projections in his forward to Donald J.Hughes' book "On Nuclear Energy".
The claim that anybody was "promised" nuclear electricty "too cheap to
meter" is a simple fraud. The original quote appeared in a small article on
page 5 of the NY Times and then vanished from the public sphere until it was
fraudulently resurrected by anti-nukes 13 years later.
We have used and still do use electricity that is "too cheap to meter".
Many apartments are rented with "all utilities" or "lights" included in the
rent. That means there is no metering of electricity for the people who
live in their homes in the apartment building. The practice was much more
widespread prior to the energy crisis in the 1970's. One of the actions
that was taken to reduce energy demand was to install meters for individual
apratments. That action was not taken because of the expense of electricty,
but as an attempt to reduce demand. Apartment house owners had decided that
the cost of electricy did not justify the expense of installing meters for
tenants. That is an exact definition of electricity being "too cheap to
meter". Have you ever paid an electric bill when you stayed at a hotel or
motel? If you haven't that means you were enjoying electricity that was
"too cheap to meter".
The optimistic predictions made by Admiral Strauss (who never went to
college) were much more accurate than the pessimistic predictions made
several years later by the doom-and-gloomers. Professor Paul R. Ehrlich's
1970 predictions in "The Arthur Godfrey Environmental Reader" titled
"Looking Backward From 2000 A.D." is an excellent example of a collection of
absurd negative predictions. Yet, they have never been mentioned in the
press. Ehrlich is still considered an authority on environmental issues.
Only one prediction of Admiral Strauss regularly appears; in a truncated
form with no context provided.
As for the newspaper article you mentioned the questions I have would still
relate to its context and the qualifications of the writer. Anyone can make
wild claims about what someone else is going to do in the future. Only a
fool would consider such wild claims to be promises made by by the person
who did not write them.
Don Kosloff dkosloff1@msn.com
2910 Main Street, Perry OH 44081
----- Original Message -----
From: <Jack_Earley@rl.gov>
To: <michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>; <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 5:27 PM
Subject: RE: stop the madness
> I also have an old newspaper that made many of the same claims; some were
> science fiction, many others could probably have been realized had people
> not let their fear, then ego, consume them. It took, as I recall, 30 years
> before electricity was accepted because of fear of the unknown. Too cheap
to
> meter? If we take into account all that was and is and will be spent on
> nonsense, like the opposition to WIPP and Yucca Mountain and shutting down
> perfectly good NPPs, and had instead put that into reduced rates and R&D,
> how far off would that claim be? Never forget that there are people whose
> sole aim is to prevent cheap power.
>
> Jack Earley
> Radiological Engineer
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