Nuclear Regulatory Commission Quotes
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.
Rocky Flats was operated for the government by Dow Chemical Company, which unfortunately violated the terms of their contract and improperly buried nuclear waste which ended up producing so much radiation that the plant had to be closed down and the government had to buy up property around the nuclear plant as a buffer zones so that private people would not receive high radiation doses by being too close to the plant.
There have been dozens of serious nuclear accidents almost all of which were withheld from the public and even many of the civilian scientists who were trying to make the bombs error proof, but who did not know the details of the kinds of human errors that were being committed. The motivations for the secrecy were multiple. There was the usual one of saving the military from embarrassment which is typical throughout the government where they have the right to classify information. But another reason was the military leaders did not want the civilians to regain control. See {637984}. Perhaps most important, they did not want to provide ammunition for the anti-nuclear movement to have the incidents with which they could scare the public and erode public support for a large nuclear weapons program.
