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Strauss's prediction did not come true, and over time it became a target of those pointing to the industry's record of overpromising and underdelivering.{{sfn|Wellock|2016}}
In 1980, the [[Atomic Industrial Forum]] wrote an article quoting his son, Lewis H. Strauss, Strauss's son, claiming that he was not talking about not [[nuclear fission]], but [[nuclear fusion]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Report on public understanding of nuclear energy, #142 |date=May 1980 |editor1-first=Robert |editor1-last=Livingston |editor2-last=Bianchi |editor2-first=Ron |publisher=Atomic Industrial Forum}}</ref> As the AEC's [[Project Sherwood]] was still classified at the time he gave the speech, he was not allowed to refer to this work directly. Since that time, this claim has been widely repeated, including in 2003 comments by Donald Hintz, chairman of the [[Nuclear Energy Institute]].{{sfn|Wellock|2016}}
To support thisthat argument, Strauss and biographer Pfau point to statements made in which hethis notedstatement: "industry would have electrical power from atomic furnaces in five to fifteen years."{{sfn|Billington|2010|p=238}} It was claimed that thisthe timeline implies that Strauss was referring to fusion, not fission.{{sfn|Wellock|2016}} ButAlthough thisit is not a direct quote, this version of the statement appeared in the ''[[New York Times]]'' overview of the speech the next day.{{sfn|Times|1954}} The statement in question is originally:
<blockquote>Dr. Lawrence Hafstad, whom all of you surely know, happens to be speaking, today, in Brussels before the Congress of Industrial Chemistry. He heads the Reactor Development Division of the Atomic Energy Commission. Therefore, he expects to be asked, "How soon will you have industrial atomic electric power in the United States?" His answer is "from 5 to 15 years depending on the vigor of the development effort."{{sfn|Strauss|1954|p=9}}</blockquote>
This statement is referring directly to fission reactors and immediately precedes the "too cheap to meter" statement.{{sfn|Strauss|1954|p=9}} The same is true of his statements on ''Meet the Press'', which are a direct reply to a question about fission.
The speech as a whole contains large sections about the development of fission power, and the difficulties that the Commission was having communicating this fact. He wryly notes receiving letters addressed to the "Atomic Bomb Commission" and then quotes a study that demonstrates the public is largely ignorant of the development of atomic power.{{sfn|Strauss|1954|p=5}} He goes on to briefly recount the development of fission, noting a letter from [[Leo Szilard]] of sixteen years earlier where he speaks of the possibility of a [[chain reaction]].{{sfn|Strauss|1954|p=7}} A later examination of the topic concluded: "there is no evidence in Strauss's papers at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library to indicate fusion was the hidden subject of his speech."{{sfn|Wellock|2016}}
Strauss viewed hydrogen fusion as the ultimate power source. Heand was eager to develop the technology as quickly as possible and urged the Project Sherwood researchers to make rapid progress, even suggesting a million-dollar prize to the individual or team that succeeded first.<ref>Bromberg, Joan Lisa (1982) ''Fusion: Science, Politics, and the Invention of a New Energy Source'' MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, [https://archive.org/details/fusionsciencepol0000brom/page/97 p. 44], {{ISBN|0-262-02180-3}}</ref> However Strauss was not optimistic about the rapid commercialization of fusion power. In August 1955 after fusion research was made public, he cautioned that "there has been nothing in the nature of breakthroughs that would warrant anyone assuming that this [fusion power] was anything except a very long range—and I would accent the word 'very'—prospect."{{sfn|Wellock|2016}}
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