Massive power outage hits Florida

[kliljedahl]

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Massive power outages struck Florida on Tuesday afternoon, with power reported out from Miami to Jacksonville on the east coast and as far north as Tampa on the Gulf Coast, police and utility officials said.


http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/US/02/26...mia.outage.jpg
Motorists try to navigate an intersection after traffic lights go dark.

About 4.4 million customers across South Florida were affected, Florida Power and Light Co. officials said.

The outage struck shortly after 1 p.m. ET as scattered thunderstorms passed through the region.

But the cause of the outage was not immediately known.

In Washington, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said there was no immediate concern that terrorism was behind the outage.

Stan Johnson, a spokesman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, said eight power plants were off-line across the region.
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He said that officials believe the outage has been contained.

Detective Robert Williams, a Miami-Dade County police spokesman, said power was out across the entire county.

Outages stretched into neighboring Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, he said.
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In Palm Beach County, spotty outages ranged from Riviera Beach to Boca Raton, said sheriff's spokeswoman Teri Barbera.

Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties are home to nearly 6 million people.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/26/flo...wer/index.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

Feb 26, 2008

MIAMI - A nuclear reactor owned by Florida's largest electric company automatically shut down Tuesday, causing sporadic power outages throughout the state that affected 3 million people. Authorities did not specify the cause of the shutdown but say there were no safety concerns.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the two Florida Power & Light nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power point 30 miles south of Miami automatically shut down. Two other power plants farther north in the state, the Crystal River reactor and St. Lucie twin reactors, continued to operate, although officials at those two facilities noticed the grid disturbance.

"We don't know whether the grid disturbance caused the units to shut down or that their shut down caused the grid disturbance," said Kenneth Clark, a spokesman at the NRC regional office in Atlanta. He said the two reactors were automatically shut down.

"There are no safety concerns. The reactors shut down as designed," said Clark in a telephone interview. He said both reactors continued to have offsite electric power. He said two coal-burning power plants at Turkey Point also shut down.

FPL estimated power should be restored by 6 p.m. A spokeswoman who spoke briefly to a reporter in the lobby of the company's Juno Beach headquarters did not have any additional information.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080226/...RHbdsA8A6s0NUE


These yahoos don't know what happened, or why the Turkey Point Nuke Plant shut itself down, but everything is fine. Oh, great.

[leftchick]

scary. :(

[DoYouEverWonder]

Turkey Point is south of Miami.

Plus we have publicly owned utilities here, so we have our own local power plants and don't need power from the nuke plants.

Still scary though, especially when the whole nuke plant shuts down and then they say, we don't know what's going on but there's nothing to worry about. To me that's usually means it's time to start worrying.