Power: Nuclear-power-plant malfunction analysis: High hopes are held for improving nuclear-plant safety through the study of transients using advanced hardware and software tools

The long Saturday night of March 31, 1979. and the early hours of the following day are vividly remembered by scores of nuclear-safety and risk-assessment experts in the United States. During those hours the experts, assembled in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's headquarters in Bethesda, Md., as well as in national laboratories, were trying to develop “what if” scenarios for the crippled Unit 2 of the Three Mile island nuclear power installation. Three days earlier the reactor had undergone what is generally recognized as the worst accident in the history of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.