{"id":3560,"date":"2013-02-04T18:54:19","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T23:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=3560"},"modified":"2013-02-04T18:54:19","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T23:54:19","slug":"nuclear-energy-and-the-too-cheap-to-meter-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2013\/02\/04\/nuclear-energy\/nuclear-energy-and-the-too-cheap-to-meter-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear Energy and the \u201cToo Cheap to Meter\u201d Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to a German proverb, \u201cL\u00fcgen haben kurze Beine<\/em>\u201d \u2013 Lies have short legs.\u00a0 That\u2019s not always true.\u00a0 Some lies have very long ones.\u00a0 One of the most notorious is the assertion, long a staple of anti-nuclear propaganda, that the nuclear industry ever claimed that nuclear power would be \u201cToo cheap to meter.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, according to the New York Times, the phrase did occur in a speech delivered to the National Association of Science Writers by Lewis L. Strauss, then Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, in September 1954.\u00a0 Here is the quote, as reported in the NYT on September 17, 1954:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,” he declared.\u00a0\u00a0 … \u00a0\u00a0 “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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that nowhere in the quote is there any direct reference to nuclear power, or for that matter, to fusion power, although the anti-nuclear\u00a0Luddites have often attributed it to proponents of that technology as well.\u00a0 According to Wikipedia, Strauss was \u201creally\u201d referring to the latter, but I know of no evidence to that effect.\u00a0 In any case, Strauss had no academic or professional background that would qualify him as an expert in nuclear energy.\u00a0 He was addressing the science writers as a government official, and hardly as a \u201cspokesman\u201d for the nuclear industry.\u00a0 The sort of utopian hyperbole reflected in the above quote<\/a> is just what one would expect in a talk delivered to such an audience in the era of scientific and technological hubris that followed World War II.\u00a0 There is an excellent and detailed deconstruction<\/a> of the infamous \u201cToo cheap to meter\u201d lie on the website of the Canadian Nuclear Society.\u00a0 Some lies, however, are just too good to ignore, and anti-nuclear zealots continue to use this one on a regular basis, as, for example, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0 The last link points to a paper by long-time anti-nukers Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska.\u00a0 They obviously knew very well the provenance of the quote and the context in which it was given.\u00a0 For example, quoting from the paper:<\/p>\n

In 1954, Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, proclaimed that the development of nuclear energy would herald a new age. “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,” he declared to a science writers’ convention. \u00a0The speech gave the nuclear power industry a memorable phrase to be identified with, but also it saddled it with a promise that was essentially impossible to fulfill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, it didn\u2019t matter that they knew very well that Strauss had no intention<\/a> of \u201cgiving the nuclear power industry a memorable phrase to be identified with.\u201d\u00a0 They used the quote in spite of the fact that they knew that claim was a lie.\u00a0 I all fairness, it can be safely assumed that most of those who pass along the \u201ctoo cheap to meter\u201d lie are not similarly culpable.\u00a0 They are merely ignorant.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a German proverb, \u201cL\u00fcgen haben kurze Beine\u201d \u2013 Lies have short legs.\u00a0 That\u2019s not always true.\u00a0 Some lies have very long ones.\u00a0 One of the most notorious is the assertion, long a staple of anti-nuclear propaganda, that the nuclear industry ever claimed that nuclear power would be \u201cToo cheap to meter.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, … Continue reading “Nuclear Energy and the \u201cToo Cheap to Meter\u201d Lie”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[37,43,78,23],"tags":[179,180],"class_list":["post-3560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-environment","category-fusion-energy","category-nuclear-energy","tag-nuclear-energy-2","tag-propaganda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-Vq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3561,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions\/3561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}