American Elec. Reliability Corp. explains why the nuclear plant shut down in Florida.

A: As far as we know, Turkey Point is going through the normal procedures for a safe and controlled shutdown. That's what always happens with nuclear plants when they go offline unexpectedly. So the operators there are doing everything they can to helping that plant down safely.

B: And any idea at this point as to what caused these power outages, what caused the transmissions to go down?

A: The information we have was that there was a short-circuit in a substation in South Florida and the protective systems that are designed to contain the problem to that substation did not work correctly, so the problem spread very rapidly, and that's why it became a widespread outage. But the …

B: So what's supposed to happen when something like that goes down?

A: Well, what's supposed to happen is the protective equipments are supposed to limit it to that problem. Just like in your home, if you have a short-circuit in your wall, only that circuit breaker should trip and not your whole house go without power. In this case, the circuit breaker apparently didn't work and that's why it spread to a much larger area.

B: And we are talking, especially when it comes to Florida power and light between 600, 000 and 800, 000 people affected. And Don was talking a little bit earlier, and it does make sense that even though this may not have worked exactly how it was supposed to, the fact that these power plants did shut down is a good thing.

A: Absolutely. That's what they're designed to do. Whether it's a nuclear plant, a coal plant or a gas fired plant they all are supposed to shut down in order to protect themselves, so they are not damaged and that they can be started back up again and continue to supply power.

B: So what happens now? Do they go back to the source of the problem, and you have to fix it at that point before you can bring all the other plants online?

A: Usually you can bypass the initial cause of the problem and get everybody back online and the companies in Florida, Tampa Electric, Florida Power and Light, and Progress, are all in the processes of doing that now getting their customers back on.

B: And Stan, from what you are hearing this was just simply a technical glitch? We spoke with our Homeland Securities correspondent, Jeanne Meserve. She said at this point she has not heard anything dealing with terrorism. So I have to ask you, have you heard anything to that extent on your end?

A: No, we have not. All the information that we have is consistent with what Jeanne has. This appears to be a technical problem, no indication whatsoever of any kind of terrorist activity.

B: Well, that is good news. And quickly as we wait for this comeback online, we've got a number of different estimates somewhere between 10 hours and then others are saying between two and four. What do you expect?

A: It depends where you are talking about in the State of Florida. Areas like Tampa and on the east coast, the central east coast that will be coming back on much more quickly. The areas in southern Florida will take a little bit longer. So it's gonna depend a bit on location.