[thackney]

"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."

Lewis L. Strauss
Speech to the National Association of Science Writers, New York City September 16th, 1954.
Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission between 1953 and 1958

Political appointee, not exactly a politician, appears to be the source of the claim.

[chimera]

The history of this quotation as fodder for anti-nuclear zealots is really the anatomy of a cliche. As far as I know, Strauss is the only one ever to utter the phrase. No one in the industry who was involved in the actual production of electrical energy ever made the claim. And with good reason, nothing is free. There ain’t no free lunch. You’re always going to have costs that someone will have to pay. The fact that it still has legs after all these years is more a tribute to the distortions of the anti-nuclear crowd and the willingness of the lamestream press to perpetuate it than it is any failure of the technology or industry.