NRC officials Harold Denton (left) and Victor Stello brief President Jimmy Carter and Pennsylvania Governor Thornburgh on the Three Mile Island accident back on April 1, 1979. According to the Presidential diary for that day, available here, the President first attended Sunday services before flying from the White House to the Air National Guard Facility in Middletown, Pa., by Marine helicopter.
After a tour of TMI, then-President Carter gave some remarks to reporters and local residents, and returned to the White House by 3:54 p.m., in time to get to St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church to watch his daughter, Amy’s, violin recital.
The Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor, near Middletown, Pa., partially melted down on March 28, 1979. It was the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history. Its aftermath brought about sweeping changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations.
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