Re: western power outage

[MCNAUGHT@LANL.GOV (Mike McNaughton)]

Apparently the power outage on Saturday began with a "frequency disruption
in the Pacific interconnect".  I assume that what this means is that some
instability caused some protective devices to trip and shut down some power
plants.  I also assume that when a nuclear power plant shuts down, it cannot
start up again immediately because of xenon poisoning.

I have two questions.

1. Is this correct?

2. Are there comparable problems with oil or coal fired power plants?

Thanks, mike