William Scranton
William Scranton
William Warren "Bill" Scrantonwas an American Republican Party politician. Scranton served as the 38th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967. From 1976 to 1977, he served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth19 July 1917
CountryUnited States of America
William Scranton quotes about
remember walking
And I remember walking in there and, I must say, I was quite unnerved the closer I got to it.
school people radiation
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.
people want panic
And if you're not going to have a clear health threat, you don't want to panic people.
ideas people would-be
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.
understanding needs judgment
You need a graphic understanding of a situation to make a complete judgment and we didn't have that.
auxiliary basement building except floor happened looked nuclear power saw
When I started walking and I looked down and I saw on the floor this water, which looked like, you know, water in your basement except it happened to be in the auxiliary building of a nuclear power plant.
knew looked none power
None of us knew what this power plant looked like. We had no schematic drawing.
lieutenant people responsibility
You're feeling the responsibility for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on your shoulder in a way that I couldn't feel as lieutenant governor.
knew minutes putting radiation took
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.
issue
But the issue became, how long do you keep the press waiting so that you can gather more information?
radiation
There are allowable limits for radiation going - I mean there's radiation all around us. There's radiation from your television set. There's radiation from your computer. There's radiation actually occurring in the ground.
calling early sources washington
They're calling their Washington sources at the NRC or in Congress and they're not hesitating to give their opinion, but their opinion, frankly, in those early days was not very well informed.
releases worked
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and EPA, et cetera, had worked out what allowable releases are.
edison information needed rely
And it was at that point that I realized, in fact, our whole administration realized, that we could not rely on Metropolitan Edison for the kind of information we needed to make decisions.