NEW YORK - The fatal chemical accident at a uranium-processing plant in Oklahoma last weekend shared several factors with the accidents at Bhopal , India, and Institute, W.Va.

The potential problems that could result from those conditions have been widely known, and experts consider most of the solutions relatively cheap and easy.

Chemical makers have promised for more than a year to foster substantial and widespread safety improvements.

But the continued pattern of accidents has heightened concern, in and out of the industry, as to whether companies using hazardous materials can fulfill the promise before increasing public pressure brings tougher government rules.

Some chemical manufacturing companies, mostly the larger ones, have indeed made major efforts to improve equipment and emergency planning. But experts widely acknowledge that the industry-wide results are uneven.

"It's more of a management problem than anything else," said Roger J. Batstone, a chemical engineer who is a safety expert at the World Bank in Washington. "These kinds of things have happened in many accidents, and they are easily avoided with proper alarms, measuring devices and back-up systems."

David C. Doniger, a senior staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington research and litigation group, explained why his group has been critical of the chemical industry.

"These patterns show that a large fraction of accidents can recur and are recurring," he said. "If there is learning going on, it is certainly not getting to everyone."

At the plant in Gore, Okla., a worker died and at least 30 other people were injured Jan. 4 after the rupture of a chemical tank holding uranium hexafluoride, a component of nuclear fuel.

The parallels are striking to the chemical leak at Bhopal , where more than 2,000 people died and 200,000 were injured in December 1984, and to the accident at Institute, where 135 people went to the hospital in August. Among the parallels are the following circumstances:

All three occurred in storage tanks, considered by experts to be the major potential area for accidents.

At the Oklahoma plant of the Sequoyah Fuels Corp., a subsidiary of the Kerr-McGee Corp., the tank had been overfilled; so had the tank at Bhopal . At Institute, the tank that leaked was thought to be empty, but was not.

At Gore, the instrument to measure the tank's contents had malfunctioned, as it did at Institute. There had also been instrument problems at Bhopal . Non-working instruments are known to be a significant safety concern industry-wide.

The chemical at Gore was being transferred out of the storage tank; transfers figured in the Institute and Bhopal accidents.

The transfer at Gore was an untested procedure; at Institute workers were dealing with a new process.

The tank at Gore was being heated to remove the chemical inside; the tank was being inadvertent