This should also be an opportunity for Westinghouse, which has designed the third-generation AP1000 reactor to shut down safely even in the event of complete loss of electric power.
In early April, the cooling system at one of the pools containing spent - but highly radioactive - fuel rods in reactor number three broke down for about three hours.
The drywell is a large steel pressure vessel that looks like a giant upside-down pear and holds the reactor and primary pumps, and the wetwell is a large toroidal vessel that looks like a donut.
That's when the Tennessee Valley Authority, a government-owned corporation, resurrected a North Alabama reactor that had been shut down for safety reasons 22 years ago.
Worse, despite fire alarms going off all over the place, operators had shut down the reactor slowly by hand instead of hitting the panic-button to close the reactor immediately.
Spain's oldest nuclear power station - the Santa Maria de Garona plant - was shut down on Sunday because the Ebro river water became too hot to cool its reactor.