Turn of millennium was era before of SSL/TLS. Livejournal did not want to send clear text password during login to the site. SRP was patent encumbered (and anyway implementing proper PAKE in JavaScript of that era was unfeasible).
The usual problem is not shutting down the reactor: both TMI and Fukushima was properly shutdown. Important task is cooling down the core (and SFP) after that.
Left on its own, halted thermal reactor generates hundreds MW of heat after shutdown. That heat destroys cladding of fuel, generates explosive Hydrogen and causes meltdowns of former core.
It is believed that ATF, core catchers and electricity-independent passive cooling will reduce risk of this types of incidents, commonly called LOCA - Loss of coolant
And even port to IBM z/VM ("Sirius"): https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/17/solaris_on_mainfram...