Burton Richter Quotes

If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear is really very good.

Before Chernobyl or without Chernobyl the nuclear power was the safe thing.

Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century's attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission.

Everybody after Fukushima had to reassess the safety of nuclear. When I set out to design a reactor, I knew it had to be passive and intrinsically safe.

The Three Mile Island Report to President Carter, if published in its entirety, would have destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry because the accident at Three Mile Island was infinitely more dangerous than was ever made public.

Nearly one third of Japan would have had to evacuate from their communities…. I came to believe that we should halt further operations of nuclear energy that entail such huge risks…. Japan can supply its energy needs without nuclear power

...the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant...has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time, we confront the real force of nuclear energy, out of control.

For the first time ever, we have confronted in reality the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy.

While many technological measures can be taken to secure safety at nuclear power plants, such measures on their own cannot cover great risks.

What are the odds that a nuclear emergency like the one at Fukushima Dai-ichi could happen in the central or eastern United States? They'd have to be astronomical, right?

These nuclear plants are more dangerous than people realize.

It's ridiculous that time and time again we need a radioactive cloud coming out of a nuclear power-station to remind us that atomic energy is extraordinarily dangerous.

With its present organization, staff and attitudes, the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is unable to fulfill its responsibility for providing an acceptable level of safety for nuclear power plants.

The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events - Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima - so it's more visible.

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.

With something like Chernobyl, the public reaction was 'Oh, my God, science has really done wrong.'

American nuclear reactors are well into middle age. The median age of an operating reactor in the U.S. is 34 years, placing start-up in midst of the Carter administration.

The tragic nuclear accident at Fukushima underscored the urgent need to enhance nuclear safety and the international emergency response framework. I commend the International Atomic Energy Agency for its work.

More than 30 of America's 100 nuclear power reactors have the same brand of General Electric reactors or containment system used in Fukushima.

In order to be vigorously continued, nuclear power must be profoundly modified.

No one in the United States has become seriously ill or has died because of any kind of accident at a civilian nuclear power plant.

None of us are nuclear experts, but we know that if there is a melt-down and breach of containment, that's clearly the most odious thing that could happen.

The revival of the Right is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.

And at ten, or whatever time, in the morning we had the press conference, what we knew is there had been an incident at Three Mile Island, that it was shut down, that there was water that had escaped but it was contained.

For 50 years, nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task, and most of the cost, of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity.