Yeah - fortunately the US always required certain safeguards - even if the operators of the plant didnt always recognize a problem and act on it properly. Since then the plants have used that mechanical failure lesson (and the personnel issues that were attached in the accident) as their basis for training people to a much higher standard and not allowing things like playboy magazines in the control room anymore
As far as the radiation from the US plants - I guess the best way I can put it in laymans terms - Id never move next to a coal-fired plant but I sure wouldnt have any problem next to a nuke plant (BTW - coal fired plants put out more radiation from natural uranium in the coal on a daily basis than a nuke plant would ever put out)
In the press's defense - they have no clue what different numbers mean when they are given them so they sensationalized the raise in radiation level to sound like something amazing - the actual radiation at the fence surrounding the plant at the highest point (where the public could get to and stand if they really wanted to - was equivalent to what you would get flying in an airplane one-way to Vegas for Internext from the fact you are receiving cosmic radiation (which is the same types of radiation)
Of course if you are a hunter (bambi that is) you always get a little more than the rest of the population because of the small amounts of Cesium in deer from the bomb tests back in the 1950s - the fallout is naturally left in the plants over time.
Now overseas plants (especially in the former USSR) the plants were not shielded to the degree the US plants are as they were more concerned with producing electricity at the cheapest cost possible which is why the plant that had the accident there did actually release quite a bit of bad stuff.