In the very early days of nuclear power, the U.S. trade journal Nucleonics sparkled with rumors and scuttlebut (it also had much serious and valuable reportage). The December 1954 issue came out just after the passage of a new major piece of legislation opening up the nuclear power market, so the question on everybody’s lips was, “who will start making nuclear energy first?”. . .
One of the most valuable books on the history of nuclear stuff is the 1989 opus by AEC official historians, Richard Hewlett & Jack Holl: Atoms for Peace and War, 1953-1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission. (A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Vol. III) (California Studies in the History of Science). You can now even buy it as an expensive Kindle ebook! A. . .
Commonwealth Edison (now buried within giant Exelon) was one of the largest utilities in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. When the United States opened up to nuclear energy, with new legislation in 1954, Com Ed was one of the first out of the starting gates; its Dresden 1 plant was the first private nuclear power station in the country. What intrigues me is how slow the “quick”. . .