William Scranton Quotes & Sayings

“By Thursday morning, we'd gotten over the worst of it.”

“The first one, obviously, was walking into my office at eight o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, and being told there was a telephone call saying that there was an incident at Three Mile Island, and that it had shut down and that beyond that we didn't know.”

“All of the information that we were getting up to that time from the NRC people, from our people who knew something about nuclear power, was that the breach of the core was not a likelihood to happen.”

“It took me 45 minutes to get in all of the suits and putting all the dosimeters on me so that they knew how much radiation I got and the protective boots and everything.”

“Nobody could tell us or really had a very good idea, if there were a massive release of radiation, what kind of medical treatment people were going to need and this or that, or, indeed, whether there would be medical personnel around.”

“There were schools and hospitals who were ready to take people with undescribed injuries, but not necessarily ready to take people with severe radiation poisoning.”

“But the issue became, how long do you keep the press waiting so that you can gather more information?”

“None of us knew what this power plant looked like. We had no schematic drawing.”

“The value of government to the people it serves is in direct relationship to the interest citizens themselves display in the affairs of state.”

“You need a graphic understanding of a situation to make a complete judgment and we didn't have that.”