Did the villain of 'Oppenheimer' have a point?

The illusory promise of cheap power fed the nuclear industry...until Three Mile Island

In a 1954 speech to science writers, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss forecast an idyllic future.

“It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,” he predicted. Strauss also spoke of the likelihood of high-speed travel “over the seas and under them and through the air,” of famines becoming a thing of the past and of researchers conquering disease to greatly extend lifespans.

Strauss was a fierce Washington power player who would be depicted by Robert Downey Jr. in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”. In an Oscar-winning turn, Downey seized the role of Strauss as the sly archenemy who torpedoes the government career of pioneering nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer.  

The promises of high-speed travel and longer lifespans have come to fruition, but “electricity too cheap to meter” launched a controversy that persists to this day. It came to mind with last week’s news about a possible restart of a reactor at Thr…