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 fa…