William Scranton

And I remember walking in there and, I must say, I was quite unnerved the closer I got to it.

— William Scranton

I was scheduled to give my first official press conference that morning anyway, 'cause I was chairman of the Governors Energy Council…

— William Scranton

There were schools and hospitals who were ready to take people with undescribed injuries, but not necessarily ready to take people with…

— William Scranton

Obviously, I'm not looking in the core of the reactor, but I am looking at what, at that time, was considered the…

— William Scranton

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and EPA, et cetera, had worked out what allowable releases are.

— William Scranton

You're feeling the responsibility for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on your shoulder in a way that I couldn't…

— William Scranton

What I had said in the morning was that this is what we know has happened, but there has been no significant…

— William Scranton

They're calling their Washington sources at the NRC or in Congress and they're not hesitating to give their opinion, but their opinion,…

— William Scranton

Another very strong image from the first day was giving my initial press conference in the morning - going down and finding…

— William Scranton

By Thursday morning, we'd gotten over the worst of it.

— William Scranton

It took me 45 minutes to get in all of the suits and putting all the dosimeters on me so that they…

— William Scranton

And it was at that point that I realized, in fact, our whole administration realized, that we could not rely on Metropolitan…

— William Scranton

There are allowable limits for radiation going - I mean there's radiation all around us. There's radiation from your television set. There's…

— William Scranton

My time inside there was very short compared to the amount of time it took to take on and take off this…

— William Scranton

None of us knew what this power plant looked like. We had no schematic drawing.

— William Scranton

The value of government to the people it serves is in direct relationship to the interest citizens themselves display in the affairs…

— William Scranton

Nobody could tell us or really had a very good idea, if there were a massive release of radiation, what kind of…

— William Scranton

And at ten, or whatever time, in the morning we had the press conference, what we knew is there had been an…

— William Scranton

But the issue became, how long do you keep the press waiting so that you can gather more information?

— William Scranton

The first one, obviously, was walking into my office at eight o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, and being told there was…

— William Scranton

And if you're not going to have a clear health threat, you don't want to panic people.

— William Scranton

When I started walking and I looked down and I saw on the floor this water, which looked like, you know, water…

— William Scranton

None of us are nuclear experts, but we know that if there is a melt-down and breach of containment, that's clearly the…

— William Scranton

You need a graphic understanding of a situation to make a complete judgment and we didn't have that.

— William Scranton

All of the information that we were getting up to that time from the NRC people, from our people who knew something…

— William Scranton