ABSTRACT
Before discussing the action needed for the design of friendlier plants, it will be useful to discuss the constraints that hinder their development. Although there has been much progress since the explosion at Flixborough in 1974 (Section 3.2.4) and the toxic gas escape at Bhopal in 1984 (Section 3.6), particularly in the reduction of the quantities of hazardous materials in storage, progress has not been as rapid as was hoped when inherently safer designs were first advocated in the 1970s.
