79-07-A2

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Three Mile Island I

Transcript I'm sure all of us feel we've had all the news about Three Mile Island and the nuclear accident there that we want to hear. But, my only reason for doing this broadcast on that subject is that I'll be using news that somehow and for some unknown reason didn't get widely reported. My decision to talk about this was triggered by a New York TIMES CBS poll that found 36 percent of the people think a nuclear power plant can blow up like an atom bomb and another 40 odd percent don't know whether it can or not. The simply inarguable truth is -- no, it cannot. The fuel used in nuclear power plants has been reduced to where it simply cannot explode. I think the news media have been, to quite an extent, irresponsible in sensationalizing Three Mile Island. Now, since I'm part of the media by way of these commentaries, I'll contribute my bit to balancing the news. The accident is still being called the "worst catastrophe in the history of nuclear power". Some catastrophe! No one was killed, no one was injured and there will probably not be a single additional death from cancer among the 2 million people living with a 50 mile radius of the plant. Don't take my word for it. Senator Edward Kennedy chaired a Senate subcommittee on April 4 which summoned Washington's top authorities in the field of health and environment to report on the accident. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, provided the information on the two million people. He further stated that the 25,000 people living within five miles of the plant had received at most, radiation equivalent to two chest x-rays. The maximum safe exposure is more than six times as much as any received by the 25,000 people. The Surgeon General told the committee there was no significant risk to the public event in the close vicinity of the plant. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the head of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, an agency that often errs on the side of being too cautious said there was no increased health risk from the drinking water or the food. The gases that escaped from the plant are a type that disperses rapidly and loses their radioactivity in only a few days. Insignificant traces of iodine were found in the milk of an area amounting to at most one three hundredth of the safe permissible level. One of the networks interviewed a man on television who owns a few goats. He said he didn't think the goats' milk was safe to drink even though government inspectors had assured him it was. The network didn't say that his wife was a member of an anti-nuclear protest group. She showed up on another program with what she said was a sick sheep and she was sure its illness was due to the accident. Incidentally, the total radioactivity the people and the animals were exposed to in the immediate vicinity of the plant was less than the difference between living in Dallas or living in the higher altitude of Denver, Colorado. There were, as I said, no injuries, no deaths, and no residual radioactivity-- and it was the worst catastrophe in the history of nuclear power. Oh yes, the supposedly radioactive cooling water released into the Susquehanna River turned out to be the water from the plant lavatories which has always been released in the river -- after an automatic checking process. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 79-07-A2 Production Date 05/08/1979 Book/Page RPtV-438 Audio Youtube? No
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