Recognizing this risk, European states examined their nuclear plant designs for vulnerabilities.
New generation plant designs are supposed to increase safety but all these do is increase the cost".
But that usually assumes that the technical problems of the past have been solved in the latest plant designs, which are largely untested at commercial scale.
In recent months, a procession of political leaders has pressed China to favor power plant designs and equipment from their home countries.
Advocates for renewed investment in nuclear power say that new plant designs could reduce or eliminate many of the meltdown and contamination risks associated with current plants.
But this is actually an opportunity for the industry to get its plant designs right, so that when conditions improve, work can begin at a gallop.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks, federal agencies have rushed to limit online access to public information, such as detailed maps of natural gas pipelines or nuclear power plant designs.
In most plant designs, the flow of water around the core must be constant, because the heat of fission can damage the reactor if it is not sapped away.
Nonetheless, the film's sections exploring how nuclear technology became demonized, from the abandonment of the completed Shoreham plant on Long Island to the shutdown of government research on a next generation of plant designs, are informative and convincing.
More broadly, the North Anna plant, which sits 10 to 12 miles from the epicenter of the quake, has emerged as a test case of sorts on whether nuclear plant designs in the Northeast are quake-resistant.
A downturn in reactor construction would hurt Japanese companies that export nuclear plant designs and components, including Toshiba, which owns Westinghouse, and Hitachi, which is in a worldwide partnership with General Electric.
