St. Petersburg, Russia, August 20, 2010 — Electricity was being restored in St. Petersburg, Russia after a blackout left 4.5 million people without power, the city’s grid operators told the media Friday.
Authorities said the power outage, which impacted about 40 percent of the city, was not the result of an explosion, fire or terror attack. The cause of the blackout has not yet been released.
Russia's national power grid operator FSK said the Saint Petersburg nuclear power station was working normally.
Russia's power industry has suffered several accidents in recent history, such as the deadly turbine room flood at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower dam last year that killed 75 people.
In 2005, a blackout in Moscow, which resulted from a substation failure, lasted several hours.
