Edward Teller Quotes
On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.
Teller, Edward. "I Was the Only Victim of Three-Mile Island." The Wall Street Journal, 31 July 1979, p. 24.
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.
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for the title, considering it poor taste. Throughout his life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability and for his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality.
