More false predictions from the past - nuclear power

Katja and Shane got me thinking about the veracity and significance of the quotes I posted last time. So I went to wikiquotes, and found a nice juicy set of quotes on nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The parallells between nuclear weapons and recursively self-improving AI were first suggested to me by our favorite proginy of sci-fi fans, but it seems that the similarity goes deeper than just "they are both examples of feedback causing something small to get very big beyond some critical point". The reaction of the world's elite may be somewhat similar. Here are the quotes from wikiquote:

• There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.
  • Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923.

• No “scientific bad boy” ever will be able to blow up the world by releasing atomic energy.
  • Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, attributed without citation in "They are saying", Popular Science 116 (2), Febriary 1930, p. 66.

• There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.
  • Albert Einstein, 1932.

• The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.
  • Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.

• Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.
  • Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, then soon-to-be British Prime Minister, 1939.

• That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done [research on]... The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.
  • Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Admiral working in the U.S. Atomic Bomb Project, advising President Truman on atomic weaponry, 1944.

• The basic questions of design, material and shielding, in combining a nuclear reactor with a home boiler and cooling unit, no longer are problems... The system would heat and cool a home, provide unlimited household hot water, and melt the snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a single charge of fissionable material costing about $300.
  • Robert Ferry, executive of the U.S. Institute of Boiler and Radiator Manufacturers, 1955.

• Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.
  • Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.

Now there is an obvious pattern in these quotes - which are explicitly preselected (only incorrect predictions are listed) - those that underestimate the potential of nuclear weapons and energy all come before one was demonstrated, and the two that overestimate its potential come after demonstration.

But the most interesting aspect of these quotes is the folley of those world famous physicists who claimed nuclear weapons/power to be impossible. Churchill's is particularly amusing: where on earth did he get the idea that nukes would work, but only work a little bit? Perhaps he was just trying to sound reasonable, compromise? Or perhaps he had a particular view of the future (a world much like his own militarily), and then backward-chained his technology predictions from that view?