75-09-B1
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Nuclear Power
TranscriptThere isn't much talk about energy these days. Maybe there should be. I'll be right back. Today I'm going to talk about something going on in California because it could happen to all of us. An overly excited group of Californians have formed a group called "People For Proof" and if they have their way we could see a halt to the building of nuclear power plants which are badly needed to provide us with economical, non-polluting, electrical power. People For Proof wants to put an issue on the California June primary ballot in 1976 which will have the people voting to receive proof of safety beyond any reasonable need before any nuclear power plants can be built. Now everyone's for safety and I'm sure we wish our highways could be a hundred percent safe that people wouldn't slip in bathtubs and that we'd never have soup spilled on our back in a crowded restaurant, but there aren't any sure things in life except the old stand-bys death and taxes. Today, 48 nations besides our own are generating electricity at low cost by use of nuclear reactors. So far there has not been one single accidental death caused by nuclear reactors. How many tests are too many? The most recent one was made by the Atomic Energy Commission it cost three million dollars and went on for two years. When you add up the number of distinguished consultants who were involved it figures out to 50 man-years of effort. Now if you were at the racetrack and the handicappers told you the odds on a certain horse were 100-to-1 you'd figure his chances of winning were pretty slim. Well our experts in the nuclear power study have put the odds on a fatal accident occurring in a nuclear power plant at 300 million-to-1. That makes it safer than all the other causes of accidental death put together. Put another way it's about as likely as you're being run over by a horse in your bathtub. Now the leaders in back of People For Proof know all this, which makes you wonder why there's some bent on throwing another roadblock in the path of getting some badly needed electric power production. Are they suggesting there must be an absolute guarantee of the complete impossibility of anything ever going wrong? The record, so far, is one of one hundred percent safety and, to repeat, the odds again as given by the best experts in the field a three hundred million-to-1. We don't start out in life with odds that good on making our three score in ten. Now I know this is a California problem-at the moment-but this kind of group is as contagious as the Hong Kong Flu. I thought you just might like a warning. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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