Band-aids and better: Hardware, instrumentation, and operations are improving on a piecemeal basis and more systematic studies are under way

Before the Three Mile island accident in 1979, safety measures built into nuclear reactors and control rooms focused on improbable catastrophic accident scenarios and the weaknesses of the machine. Only minor attention was paid to the role of plant operators and emergency procedures. Now the focus is on lesser, more probable events and on the man-machine interface.