Bill Dedman Quotes
Each year, at the typical nuclear reactor in the U.S., there's a 1 in 74,176 chance of an earthquake strong enough to cause damage to the reactor's core, which could expose the public to radiation. No tsunami required.
Dedman, Bill. "What are the odds? US nuke plants ranked by quake risk." NBC News, NBCUniversal, 17 Mar. 2011.
Rickover, the father of the nuclear submarine was not only an expert in nuclear reactors and power, but he was known as a safety perfectionist with a safety record in the Navy that is still marveled at. President Carter, as a naval officer, had worked for Rickover and himself was technologically knowledgeable about nuclear power. He asked his old mentor to chair the investigating the Three Mile Island incident. Rickover actually recommended to the President that much of the report be secret, assuming that reform would take place quickly if the nuclear power industry were not killed by the damning expose of inept personnel and the lack of safety processes with a very dangerous process. However, few reforms were made nationally, and Rickover, 6 years later, grew to regret his recommendation for secrecy.
There was massive opposition to nuclear power in most countries of the world except France where the operators and technicians are so well trained and there are such high safety standards that the public had confidence in the nuclear management that did not exist in most other countries.
Bill Dedman (born 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, an investigative reporter for Newsday, and co-author of the biography of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.
