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"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."
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It is often (understandably but erroneously) assumed that Strauss' prediction was a reference to conventional uranium fission nuclear reactors. Indeed, only ten days prior to his “Too Cheap To Meter” speech, Strauss was present for the groundbreaking of the [[Shippingport Atomic Power Station]] where he predicted that, "industry would have electrical power from atomic furnaces in five to fifteen years." However, Strauss was actually referring to [[hydrogen fusion]] power and [[Project Sherwood]], which was conducting secret research on developing practical fusion power plants.
| url= http://books.google.com/books?id=qBqbr8uV9c8C&pg=PA32&ots=X_NiY853vH&dq=strauss+son+cheap+meter&sig=NJRVHP66IqtX80mgp38UfttAIPc
| title= ''Nuclear Energy: Principles, Practices, and Prospects''
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| accessdate= 2008-01-31 }}</ref>
Strauss gave no public hint at the time that he was referring to fusion reactors because of the classified nature of Project Sherwood and the press naturally took his prediction regarding cheap electricity to apply to conventional fission reactors. However, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission itself in testimony to the U.S. Congress only months before lowered the expectations for fission power, projecting only that the costs of reactors could be brought down to about the same as from conventional sources.
== See also ==
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