April 11, 2011. Click headline to read more. See also: Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Plant Shut Down. Look, the US is demonstrably under-prepared for current climate conditions. MSM has to pick up these climate-related shut downs. And politicians have to stop messing around with people’s lives and get on the alt-energy bandwagon. 

Update: @butterforce: Yes, it is an extremely bad thing. A shut down for more than a few hours can lead to catastrophic meltdown. Nuclear power plants need constant cooling, 24/7/365. The above shut down is a safety and infrastructure problem - diesel back-up generators are a short term fix. Brown’s Ferry took weeks to recover, and, luckily, there wasn’t another set of storms during that recovery time, nor was this recovery paralleled with yet another regional drought. I get where you’re coming from, and I wish these plants worked that way, with on/off switches. But, they don’t. Hope this helps!