Answers sought in Fla. blackout

MIAMI


Federal regulatory officials and utility executives said the nuclear system worked as intended by shutting down automatically rather than risking wider damage from voltage fluctuations. But they were at a loss to explain why the outage got as far as it did.

“That’s the part we don’t have an answer for,” said Armando Olivera, president of Florida Power & Light.

Olivera said the failure at a transmission station in Dade County about 1 p.m. should not have caused a widespread collapse of the power grid. Electricity was restored to virtually all customers shortly after 5 p.m., but federal officials want to know how it happened.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors were on site and the NRC said it was monitoring the situation from its Maryland headquarters in Rockville.

USA Today