Zubaydi, who until recently had lived in exile in Britain, told about 1, 500 civil servants that if they were police officers or electrical plant workers they should return to their jobs.

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The plant has not strengthened electrical cables to withstand fire damage for one to three hours, a regulation established to provide necessary plant security in the event of an emergency.

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Roughly 70 percent of electrical power generated at a plant is lost in transmission lines.

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He added that it was the first time so many facilities had been affected by electrical failure at the same time since the plant was brought under control in December 2011.

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For example, rebuilding the local water treatment plant, but forgetting to fix the electrical grid that powers the facility, should be a fail.

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And then there was the lack of electrical power -- the quakes cracked a hydroelectric power plant, forcing authorities to shut it down, making even a nearby airport unusable until portable generators could go online.

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Kim insists there will be plenty of electrical power available from nearby dams and an oil-fueled power plant.

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At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, cooling systems failed in the aftermath of an earthquake and tsunami when electrical power was lost.

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