Reminds me of Ted Taylor: http://www.amazon.com/The-Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming/dp/0...

He didn't stop with the high explosives, he went Nuclear!

"The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor" is excellent as well:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming/dp/0...

I'm disappointed by Gladwell misinterpreting Lewis Strauss' remarks. When Strauss claimed that electrical energy [will be] too cheap to meter, he was talking about subsidizing plutonium production. Originally, the feds needed plutonium for nuclear weapon production, and they were paying about $1,000,000 per kilo of privately produced plutonium. At those prices, the sales of plutonium would cover the price of building and operating a plant, and the electricity would be a free by-product.

When the feds quit purchasing plutonium in the early 1970s, it destroyed the economic model for building and operating nuclear power plants. Not the meltdown at three mile island, nor tree hugging lawyers.

Please read The Curve of Binding Energy for more details. http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming-Theodore...

According to The Curve of Binding Energy, nuclear power was going to be subsidized by the sale of plutonium to the AEC. At about a megabuck per kilogram of plu, the sale of plu would pay for the cost of constructing and operating a nuclear power plant, and that lead to the AEC's Chairman claiming that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter" because it would be a by-product of the nuclear fuel cycle. At the end of 2005, there were 1700 tons of privately owned plutonium in the US (the US military has about 100 tons of plu: about 2/3 are in actual weapons).

http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming-Theodore...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7006056.stm

If his claim is true, then it wasn't tree-huggers who killed off the nuclear power industry, nor Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome, it was cold economics.