In September 1954, Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, gave a speech before the National Association of Science Writers. He said:
"It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, 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. This is a forecast of an age of peace."
Too cheap to meter is a pretty bold prediction (as were the others). My Internet service and Vonage phone aren't metered. I can use them as much or as little as I want for a flat monthly fee. But electricity? What was Strauss thinking? It turns out that while he had nuclear power in mind, it probably isn't the type of nuclear power YOU had in mind.
In 1951, Argentina announced to the world that it had demonstrated "...[hydrogen fusion] reactions under controlled conditions..." It was headline news. The claim was quickly dismissed by the scientific community but it galvanized thinking about the feasibility of harnessing fusion for real. Among those intrigued by the announcement was Lyman Spitzer Jr., a Princeton astrophysicist working on the American hydrogen bomb project. Spitzer proposed a machine he called a "stellarator" that used strong electromagnets to keep a hot plasma of hydrogen ions confined long enough for hydrogen ignition to take place. The national labs at Los Alamos and Livermore developed their own hydrogen confinement ideas, such as the "pinch" and "mirror". Yet another scientist had a concept that was analogous to an internal combustion engine. It relied on an electromagnetic pulse on its "compression stroke" to compress plasma to incredible pressures and temperatures. The resulting fusion reactions would generate its own electromagnetic pulse on the "power stroke" that could be converted directly to electricity. These ideas were soon funded as part of Project Matterhorn, as the hydrogen or "super" bomb program was known. But the government's aims were not primarily to develop a source of inexpensive electricity for mankind. Fusion reactors had potential military applications. Depending on the mix of hydrogen isotopes used, the fusion reaction would either produce tritium, which was needed for thermonuclear warheads, or neutrons which could be used to convert Uranium-238 to fissile plutonium. Therefore, the program was kept secret. However, there were plenty of competing needs within Project Matterhorn and fusion research was given a low priority.
That changed in 1953 when Lewis Strauss was made Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss believed hydrogen fusion could become the ultimate source of power and was determined to deliver the technology to mankind on his watch. In her book Fusion (MIT Press), Joan Bromberg describes how Strauss vowed, "In my time, this shall come to pass." He reorganized the program, increased its priority, and dramatically increased the budgets and staffs under what became known as Project Sherwood. The resulting competition between the various national labs and rumors about what the Russians and British were up to created a heady atmosphere.
Strauss had a huge amount of admiration for, and faith in, scientists. He and the rest of the AEC commissioners were practically giddy over the idea of controlled fusion. Strauss was determined that the program would not fail due to lack of funding. He would visit the labs and say things like "Well now, what would happen if we offered a million dollar prize to the first person or group to develop controlled fusion?" or "Let's assume that money was no object. How can this program be pushed most rapidly, most effectively, most energetically?" Strauss was anxious for quick results and the scientists found themselves in the odd position of recommending that spending on hardware slow down until the theoreticians could catch up and give the experimentalists a better idea how to design their machines. Nonetheless, by early 1954 Spitzer was proposing a family of stellarators ranging from small "Model A" research experiments for studying basic plasma behavior to a prototype "Model C" and a full scale "Model D" demonstration plant. Engineers from General Electric and Westinghouse were brought in to work out the details of an actual power plant. The Model D was envisioned to be 500 feet long and produce a whopping 5,000 Megawatts of electricity. Although the requisite plasma temperatures and confinement times had yet to be achieved in the lab, steady progress was being made and the limited experimental results were encouraging. The scientists predicted that the basics of hydrogen fusion would be mastered in as little as five years and that a Model D power plant might come on line as soon as 1975.
However, in 1958 the United States and the rest of the world agreed to begin sharing information on fusion research and the scientists realized that the difficulties were going to be greater than had been anticipated. In 1958 Strauss left AEC and his successor changed Sherwood from a crash program to one of basic research. Fusion research made a resurgence in the 1970's during the oil embargoes and there was talk of a working fusion power plant on line by 2000. Currently, global warming seems to have increased interest in fusion as an alternative to fossil and fission plants, although the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will not produce electricity and an actual electric power plant isn't expected before 2050.
To be sure, Strauss was a strong advocate for fission reactors also, but his motivation was more complex. The 50's were an exhilarating yet anxious time. On the one hand, increasingly prosperous families gathered around black and white television sets and watched commercials of homemakers in pearls and heels throwing their arms wide to draw attention to the GE Kitchen of the Future. Meanwhile schoolchildren were led to believe they stood a chance of surviving a nuclear attack if they would only duck and cover. In his memoirs, Men and Decisions, Strauss recounted that when he took the oath as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, President Eisenhower took him aside and said, "Lewis, let us be certain about this; my chief concern, and your first assignment, is to find some new approach to the disarming of nuclear energy...The world simply must not go on living in fear of the terrible consequence of nuclear war." The United States and Russia were locked in an arms struggle. Neither side felt they could afford to stop, yet it was a race that could not be won and which ultimately everyone was destined to lose. Eisenhower had an idea and Strauss, who had been thinking along similar lines, fleshed it out. Just as steel that is being used for plowshares is metal that isn't being used for swords, uranium used for peaceful purposes was material that wasn't in a bomb. In 1953, Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech (which Strauss wrote) to the United Nations. In it he said:
...The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes.
It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace...
Fission reactors were seen as a peaceful alternative to bombs. But they proved to be a hard sell. Contrary to the common perception, fission reactors were projected by most to be at best "competitive" (PR-speak for "almost as cheap as the alternatives"). Others predicted that the US would abandon the fission power program altogether by 1960. But Strauss, with his strong faith in capitalism, was convinced that fission power would eventually stand on its own without government support. He felt that innovation could drive down the expense and make fission "cost effective" compared to coal, oil, and gas. So Strauss's view did not represent the consensus. Indeed, ten days before his Too Cheap to Meter speech, Strauss was chided by a colleague for "sticking his neck out" at the ground-breaking of the 60 megawatt Shippingport reactor when he publicly predicted that nuclear plants of far greater size and sophistication would soon be built. But by that time GE and Westinghouse were on the inside at Project Sherwood and things were still looking good for hydrogen fusion. They were lukewarm about developing commercial fission reactor designs if fusion was going to leapfrog all other sources in a couple of decades. In addition there were concerns about responsibility for the waste and spent fuel, which drove away most utilities. But as fusion's fortunes waned, Strauss's successors began to push fission reactors harder and started to attract interest. In the late 1960's twenty percent of the electricity generated in the United States came from oil, while nuclear power made a minor contribution. Today the percentages are swapped.
Strauss had an unfaltering, perhaps naive, faith in science and scientists and the benefits they could provide mankind. Strauss's Too Cheap to Meter speech is little more than an expansion on the theme of Eisenhower's Peaceful Atoms speech. Strauss's predictions were partially realized, more so than the general public realizes. Besides being a nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, which was created in response to the Peaceful Atoms speech, has a program for developing mutant strains of plants. The outcome of their work includes a variety of peppermint that resists wilt and now supplies most of the world's peppermint oil; an improved cocoa plant; salt-tolerant rice; and, a strain of barley that grows at high altitudes. The use of medical radioisotopes to diagnose and treat disease is widespread. For example, several years ago my sister was injected with a large dose of Iodine-131 to treat her Grave's Disease (ironically I-131 was also responsible for much of Chernobyl's adverse health effects). While nuclear technology has not ended hunger and death, it has made positive contributions.
