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<blockquote>It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, 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.<ref name="thisdayinquotes">{{cite web |url=http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2009/09/too-cheap-to-meter-nuclear-quote-debate.html |title=This Day in Quotes: SEPTEMBER 16 - Too cheap to meter: the great nuclear quote debate |access-date=December 13, 2009 |publisher=This day in quotes |year=2009}}</ref>{{sfn|Strauss|1954|p=9}}</blockquote>
Only a few days later, Strauss was a guest on ''[[Meet the Press]]''. When the reporters asked him about the quotation and the viability of "commercial power from atomic piles," Strauss replied that he expected his children and grandchildren would have power "too cheap to be metered, just as we have water today that's too cheap to be metered."{{sfn|Wellock|2016}}
The statement was contentious even when stated. 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 those for conventional sources.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,893336,00.html |title=ATOMIC ENERGY: The Nuclear Revolution |magazine=Time Magazine |date=6 February 1956}}</ref> A later survey found dozens of statements from the period that suggested it was widely believed that nuclear energy would be more expensive than coal, at least in the foreseeable future.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://cns-snc.ca/media/media/toocheap/toocheap.html |title=Too Cheap to Meter? |first=M.J. |last=Brown |date=14 December 2016 |website=Canadian Nuclear Society}}</ref> James Ramey, who would later become the AEC Commissioner, noted: "Nobody took Strauss' statement very seriously."{{sfn|Wellock|2016}}
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