Regulators will probably allow Comcast, an American cable company, to buy NBC Universal, a film and television outfit currently owned by General Electric and Vivendi, two industrial giants.

A 330 kV cable line was laid from the Pridneprovskaya Thermal Power Plant to feed the electric station.

"We apply [an] electric pulse to either end of the cable for about one second," Petrenko says, "and all ice attached to it falls down."