Agreed ... but I'll posit the existence of technical 'treehuggers' who knew it early on (and kept quiet after what happened to Oppenheimer.) Further posit: the

Agreed ... but I'll posit the existence of technical 'treehuggers' who knew it early on (and kept quiet after what happened to Oppenheimer.) Further posit: they were aware that nukes were more about making Pu than heat. No insurance company back in the day would accept the risk either (thus the 1957 'Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act'). Anyway, I'll quote a 1951 expert: "t is safe to say ... that atomic power is not the means by which man will for the first time emancipate himself economically.… At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy which can be extracted much more economically from conventional fuels.… This is expensive power, not cheap power as the public has been led to believe." — C. G. Suits, Director of Research, General Electric, who who was operating the Hanford reactors. [https://www.ieer.org/pubs/atomicmyths.html https://www.ieer.org/pubs/atomicmyths.html]