was shocked he told me this, that he was absolutely shocked. He realised that the estimates of the cost of nuclearenergy compared with the costs of coal energy were cooked; and when I [asked] him "Why didn't you doanything about it?", he said: "Well, I couldn't, because the thing's gone toofar." You see, so much had been committed [by] then to a nuclear future... It must've been some billions that they'd already spent. It was too late.[From Harold Wilson's address at the] Labour Party Conference [in] 1963 "It is, of course, a cliche that [] we're living at a time ofsuch rapid scientific change that our children are acceptingas part of their everyday life things which would've been dismissed as science fiction a fewyears ago. "We're living, perhaps, in a more rapidrevolution than some of us realise."The politicians were nowcommitted to nuclear power. In 1960, a Labour politician, Anthony WedgewoodBenn, suggested an idea for a party political broadcast. To the hymn Jerusalem,the camera would rise from waving fields of corn to reveal anatomic plant.[Back to Harold Wilson's conference address] "... the conscious, planned, purposive use ofscientific progress, to provide undreamed-of living standards andthe possibility of leisure, ultimately, on an unbelievable scale."Nuclear scientists were nowbeing carried along by a political enthusiasm for what science could achieve.Yet few of them, in Britain, America or the Soviet Union, knew how to fulfilthe promises they had made.[From] ATOMIC ACHIEVEMENT, [a] Westinghouse promotional film [Voiceover:] "There's a new dawn breaking over ourworld: the hopeful dawn of the atomic era. Whatbenefits..."But two large Americancorporations, Westinghouse and General Electric, had already invested millionsof dollars in nuclear technology. For them, there was no way back. In 1961, thenew chief executive of General Electric told his staff: "We're goingto ram this nuclear thing through." [Voiceover:] "... we can move forward to new and evengreater achievements in the atomic era. This is thehope that awaits us, in this new dawn's early light."Control over nucleartechnology had passed from the scientists to the industrialists. They were nowabout to take an enormous gamble: to make nuclear power not only practical, butprofitable.[?[Bertram Wolfe], ?[General Manager], GE Nuclear Energy] I'm Bert Wolfe [sp?]; I head General Electric's peaceful nuclear power programme. ...and this is a building which is made to model anactual [sic] boiling-water reactor ... We can come right over here to a facility where down low inthe cavity there is the boiling-water reactor.General Electric andWestinghouse took the simplest form of nuclear reactor originally designedfor submarines and redesignedit on a gigantic scale. These were then offered to power companies at knockdownprices. The manufacturers decided to bear any extra costs themselves. Theygambled they could start a bandwagon which would make the nuclear businessprofitable. The key figure was the salesman.[?Bertram Wolfe] We would sell one at a time; and each time we soldone, we'd have a celebration I can recall when we had meetings and someone would come in and [say] "We sold a plant to(somebody)!" and we'd all stand up and shake hands and... go outfor lunch and have wine and toast each other... It was a