As The 25TH anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island-2 approaches, I would like to share some reflections on my experience as a staff member of the Kemeny Commission. The President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island—better known by the name of its chairman, John Kemeny, who was a former associate of Albert Einstein and at the time of the accident, the president of Dartmouth College—was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in the days following the March 28,1979, accident. What we did during the spring, summer, and fall of 1979 influenced the safety of nuclear operations after TMI; creation of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) was in large part responding to Kemeny Commission recommendations. Many have wondered how a Navy guy got mixed up with Dr. John Kemeny's investigation. There were many times back in 1979 when I, too, wondered how I got mixed up with it. The commission staff, as originally constituted, didn't include anyone involved with nuclear power. This was because of White House and commission concerns that the results of the investigation be credible. They didn't want anyone to claim the report had been tainted by the industry. The commission soon discovered, though, that a nuclear power plant accident couldn't be investigated solely by lawyers, public affairs specialists, and NASA en-gineers. So Dr. Kemeny turned to the secretary of defense for help from the Navy.
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