It was Memorial Day weekend in 2012 - and a beautiful day for a car race in Indianapolis.
I was wearing my Indy 500 VIP lanyard, proud to be at the celebrated Brickyard to promote the Entergy “Nuclear Clean Air Energy” car.
Entergy Nuclear had announced earlier that year it was sponsoring an Indy car with a Lotus engine that would be driven by the Swiss-Italian phenom Simona De Silvestro. Nicknamed "The Iron Maiden," Simona was rookie of the year at the previous Indianapolis 500.
Entergy Nuclear was using the car to raise the visibility of clean, low-cost and reliable nuclear energy. As a side note, it required ninja-like PR contortions to justify the use of an Indy car with its carbon footprint to tout nuclear's clean air benefits.
I had barely settled into my seat in the stands of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when Simona got the black flag and was stopped — after completing only 10 laps in the 200-lap race.
Not being an avid racecar fan, I didn't know what a black flag meant. But I quickly learned it meant there were concerns her slower car could become a dangerous impediment for the faster cars.
And it meant I was going to watch the remaining 95 percent of the race with no one to root for. This gave me time to ponder the wisdom of stepping onto a very large stage with a very underpowered car. Using a slow Indy car to promote nuclear energy, well, uh... backfired.
It turned out that both cars with the lackluster Lotus engines were black-flagged and pulled out of the Indianapolis 500 that day for going too slow. The pride of the nuclear side had been running 14 mph slower than the race leaders.
It was a long and disappointing day. But looking back, I see a clear parallel between the race official's decision to take Simona off the track and the idea that in the nuclear industry we're all hostages of each other. It was Pat Haggerty, CEO of Texas Instruments and member of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, who introduced the idea that poor performance at one of our nuclear stations can hurt us all.
His message still resonates four decades later - a message nuclear communicators should share with employees widely and often:
There always exists, even though the probability of occurrence is very low, the potential for a catastrophic accident from a nuclear generating plant. Every licensee, from a safety standpoint, is the captive of every other licensee because poor safety procedures at any plant resulting in an accident will have immediate detrimental consequences on the management and operation of every other plant.