- Hans Bethe: I have often said, and I will say it again, that the use of oil for making electricity is a sin. You see, we could save two million barrels on the automobiles. If you add this together, you'll find that we could, by substitution, mostly by substitution of other fuels, and then by conservation, save about nine million barrels a day, which is more than what we import now. Therefore, for the first time in my knowledge, I have come to recognize that energy independence for this country is a real possibility if we really put our mind to it, then we could eliminate all oil imports to this country by these three methods: substitution, synthetic fuels, and conservation.
- Hans Bethe: The key to nuclear safety remains people. Not enough bright young people go into nuclear power. This is largely due to the negative public attitude. The danger exists that the anti-nuclear people may have made a self-fulfilling prophecy. They have said over and over again that nuclear power is not safe. At present, I believe it is safe, but if the number and quality of people going into nuclear power declines, then reactors someday actually may become unsafe. Nobody can guarantee absolute safety. There is nothing in this world which is free of risk and nuclear power is no exception, but the risk from nuclear power, in my opinion, is far less than from any other way of producing power, and less than from most other industrial enterprises, and of course, industrial enterprises in turn are far less risky than having industrial civilization.
- Hans Bethe: What people like myself are advocating is not an unlimited growth of energy consumption. Many of the anti-people accuse us of that, that we want unlimited growth. We don't but we do not want decay and if we don't do anything reasonable, then there will be decay, not just no growth, but decay, decline of everything that we are doing nowadays.
