News & Events

It’s a great honor to be here tonight and to see this many young people in one location talking about nuclear energy. It makes me realize that we do have a tremendous future ahead of us. I can tell you that the industry needs every one of you, so thank you for coming and for being involved with this conference.

I think it’s great that there are so many opportunities for you now, and I’ll talk more about that as I talk about your future and the future I see within the nuclear profession. But before we talk about the nuclear industry, I thought it would be interesting to look at some past predictions for other industries.

Here’s the first one:

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." That’s from a 1949 article in Popular Mechanics — I hope you all brought your 1½ ton laptops with you this weekend.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." From a Western Union internal memo, 1876. Well, certainly they did not make use of it, did they?

This next one has some value for those of you who have watched what’s gone on with the stock market in the last 90 days.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." That’s by Irving Fisher, a Professor of Economics from Yale University in 1929.

I really like the last one. This was by Charles H. Duell, the Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents in 1899.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Let’s hope that’s not true.