(October 16, 1998) " I have had to advise Congress that there is a forty-five percent chance of another serious nuclear accident within the next twenty years."
James Asselstine, Head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, speaking on BBC TV on 27 May 1986.
"There is openness and frankness in this country in dealing with the nuclear industry... If there had been an accident of that kind in this country, there is no question that we would have been open and frank about it straight away."
Kenneth Baker, Environment Secretary, to the House of Commons, UK. April 29, 1986, just after Chernobyl.
"The nuclear controversy involves people's hearts more than their heads. The public isn't won over by facts and statistics. The nuclear debate isn't over whose facts are correct, but instead, who can come up with greater hazard and have it successfully perceived so by the people. So forget the facts once in a while. Counter the activists not with facts but with closed factory gates, empty schools, cold and dark homes and sad children...
"Once the emotional chord is struck, the sound will carry to the state and Federal political arenas where the outcome of the nuclear controversy is being decided."
Frank B. Shants, Public Service Company of New Hampshire, USA, 1978 (quoted in: Nukespeak, the selling of nuclear technology in America)
"Everything we've kept secret, we've kept secret for sound technical reasons, without any political implications whatsoever."
Murray L. Nash, deputy director of the US Department of Energy's Office of Classification, March 24, 1980 (quoted in: Nukespeak, the selling of nuclear technology in America)