[Grog]

Power plants need power to start up. Sounds like they lost their connection to the grid (either quake or big wave) My gas turbine plant still uses almost a megawatt at rest, when we are starting up with all required systems running we use up 10 megawatts. Nuke plants and coal plants use more than a couple hundred megawatts just to operate the systems. The coal plant I worked at had a induced draft fan that was 13.8k volts, 10K hp, had four of these just to pull air through the boilers. I don't know of any nuke plants with black start capabilities. (can start without outside power) There are rules for power companies to have the ability to start one or more plants without the grid. Our old gas turbine plant next to us has a diesel generator that outputs enough to start a small Alstom turbine, 20mw. Then it is used to start one of their 60mw GE units. The emergency back up diesels even if running wouldn't be big enough to start one reactor plant.