32 Years Later, A Look Back at Three Mile Island

National Public Radio has a short bit on the lessons learned from the Three Mile Island accident that happened this day back in 1979, here’s a snippet:

“The most important changes were what were called human factors,” [former NRC historian Sam] Walker says. “That was the lesson that was most obvious was one, you had to improve operator training. You had to give the operators the knowledge and the tools they needed to be able to deal with a situation like they faced on the morning of March 28, 1979.”

Today every nuclear power plant is required to build a replica of its control room for training purposes.

"It's real," says Ralph DeSantis, communication manager at Three Mile Island. "It's as real as it can be. Like a cockpit simulator for airline pilots, the training is very realistic."

And just like TMI, the nuclear industry will continue to learn and improve upon its safety and operations from the lessons that come out of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident.

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