In response to those who say that the Soviet nuclear accident [at Chernobyl] was due less to nuclear energy in general than to "that lousy Soviet technology" in particular, I say that the risks to the masses of us people are too great. It is only a fool who believes he can always control everything, and we mere mortals must never underestimate the astronomically immense power of the atom.

In addition, let us never for a moment forget that it is exactly "that lousy Soviet technology" that is controlling their massive nuclear arsenal, aimed at us! Regardless of how good American military technology is and will be, it is Soviet technology preventing the accidental launching of their nuclear warheads targeted at us -- quite literally, our lives are in their hands, not our own!

So the next time a politician comes up with an excuse, no matter how seemingly good or poor, about why there will not soon be a verifiable nuclear treaty between us two superpowers limiting nuclear weapons to strategic, not human-extinction-producing numbers, just remember those perhaps thousands of common...[Ukrainian] men, women, and children who died and will continue to die, most hideously by radiation, because of this nuclear accident; and ask yourself, "What would they have given for another chance at life?"