The Most Likely Armageddon Threat … Preventable for a Small Amount of Money
Well-known physicist Michio Kaku and other members of the American
Physical Society asked Congress to appropriate $100 million to harden
the country’s electrical grid against solar flares. As shown below,
such an event is actually the
most likely Armageddon-type event faced by humanity.
Congress refused.
Kaku
explains that a solar flare like the one that
hit the U.S. in 1859 would – in the current era of nuclear power and electric refrigeration – cause widespread destruction and chaos.
Not only could such a flare bring on
hundreds of Fukushima-type accidents, but it could well cause food riots globally.
Kaku
explains
that relief came in for people hit by disasters like Katrina or Sandy
from the “outside”. But a large solar flare could knock out a lot of the
power nationwide. So – as people’s food spoils due to lack of
refrigeration – emergency workers from other areas would be too
preoccupied with their own local crisis to help. There would, in short,
be no “cavalry” to the rescue in much of the country.
In fact, NASA scientists are predicting that a solar storm will knock
out most of the electrical power grid in many countries worldwide,
perhaps for months. See
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this and
this.
News Corp Australia
noted in February:
A 2009 study by the National Academy of Sciences warned
that a massive geomagnetic assault on satellites and interconnected
power grids could result in a blackout from which the nation may need four to 10 years to recover.
***
In May 2012, a US Geological Survey report estimated a 6 percent chance of another Carrington event [referring to the solar flare of 1859
which was so strong that telegraph lines, towers and stations caught on
fire at a number of locations around the world, and sparks showered
from telegraph machines] occurring in the next decade.
***
But we do not know whether or not the Carrington event was as bad as sunstorms get.
[University of Kansas physicist Adrian ] Melott proposed that material from a solar megaflare 10 times the strength of the Carrington kind bombarded this planet around the year 775.
This is not just a theoretical fear: the Earth has narrowly missed being crisped by a large solar flare
several times in the last couple of years. For example, the Los Angeles Times
reported last month:
Earth barely missed the “perfect solar storm” that could
have smashed into our magnetic field and wreaked havoc with our
satellite systems, electronics and power systems, potentially causing
trillions of dollars in damage, according to data from NASA’s STEREO-A
spacecraft.
***
If the solar onslaught had occurred just nine days earlier, it would have rivaled the 1859 Carrington event …
“Observations of such a solar superstorm during a very weak solar
cycle indicate that extreme events are not as infrequent as we imagine,”
the authors wrote.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters
notes:
We have the very real possibility that a geomagnetic
storms of an intensity that has happened before–and will happen
again–could knock out the power to tens of millions of Americans for
multiple years. The electrical grids in Europe and northern Asia have
similar vulnerabilities, so a huge, years-long global emergency
affecting hundreds of millions of people and costing many trillions of
dollars might result from a repeat of the 1859 or 1921 geomagnetic
storms.
Masters points out that the U.S. electrical grid is extremely vulnerable:
Figure 2. Computer model study showing electrical systems
that might be affected by a geomagnetic storm equivalent to the May
14-15, 1921 event. The regions outlined by the heavy black lines are
susceptible to system collapse lasting months or years. A population in
excess of 130 million might be affected, at a cost of $1-2 trillion in
the first year after the event. The network of thin black lines shows
the location of the nearly 80,000 miles long-distance heavy-hauling
345kV, 500kV and 765kV transmission lines in the U.S.–the main arteries
of the U.S. electrical grid. The circles indicate magnitudes of
geomagnetically-induced current (GIC) flow at each transformer in the
network, and the color of the circle indicates the polarity of the
current. Image credit:
John Kappenman, Metatech Corp., The Future: Solutions or
Vulnerabilities?, presentation to the space weather workshop, May 23,
2008.
What would happen to nuclear power plants world wide if their power –
and most of the surrounding modern infrastructure – is knocked out?
Nuclear power companies are notoriously cheap in trying to cut costs. If
they are failing to
harden their electrical components to protect against the predicted solar storm, they are
asking for trouble
… perhaps on a scale that dwarfs Fukushima. Because while Fukushima is
the first nuclear accident to involve multiple reactors within the same
complex, a large solar storm could cause accidents at multiple complexes
in numerous countries.
Most current reactors are of a similarly outdated design as the
Fukushima reactors, where the cooling systems require electricity to
operate, and
huge amounts of spent radioactive fuel are housed on-site, requiring continuous cooling to prevent radioactive release. (Designs which would automatically shut down – and cool down – in the event of an accident are
ignored for political reasons.)
If the nuclear power companies and governments continue to cut costs
and take large gambles, the next nuclear accident could make Fukushima
look tame.
A large solar storm which knocks out electrical grids over wide portions of the planet
will
happen at some point in the future. Don’t pretend it is unforeseeable.
The nuclear power industry is on notice that it must spend the
relatively
small amounts of money necessary to prevent a widespread meltdown from the loss of power due to a solar storm.
G2 Bulletin reports:
As scientists warn of an impending solar storm … that
could collapse the national power grid, thrusting millions into darkness
instantly, a debate has flared up between utilities and the federal
government on the severity of such an event.
NASA and the National Academy of Sciences previously confirmed to
G2Bulletin that an electromagnetic pulse event from an intense solar
storm could occur any time …
They say it could have the effect of frying electronics and knocking out transformers in the national electric grid system.
Already, there are separate published reports of massive
solar storms of plasma – some as large as the Earth itself – flaring off
of the sun’s surface and shooting out into space, with some recently
having come close enough to Earth to affect worldwide communications and alter the flights of commercial aircraft near the North Pole.
But in February, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation,
which represents the power industry, issued a stunning report asserting
that a worst-case geomagnetic “super storm” like the 1859 Carrington
Event likely wouldn’t damage most power grid transformers. Instead, it
would cause voltage instability and possibly result in blackouts lasting
only a few hours or days, but not months and years.
NERC’s assertion, however, is at serious variance with the 2008
congressional EMP Commission, the 2008 National Academy of Sciences
report; a 2010 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report; the 2012
report by the Defense Committee of the British Parliament, and others.
Even the British scientists who contributed to the parliament report
came to their own independent assessment that a great geomagnetic storm
would cause widespread damage to power grid transformers and result in a
protracted blackout lasting months, or even years, with catastrophic consequences for society.
***
[The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or "FERC"], which
regulates interstate electricity and other energy sales but has no
authority now over local utilities to harden their grid sites, says that
as many as 130 million Americans could have problems for years.
***
U.S. transformers on the average are more than 30 years old and are susceptible to internal heating, according to FERC experts.
***
There is ample evidence in the possession of the FERC revealing the
damage to transformers from previous geomagnetic storms. For example,
there was serious transformer damage to the Salem nuclear power
plant in New Jersey in the aftermath of the same geomagnetic storm that
caused the March 1989 Hydro-Quebec blackout.
Making Ourselves More Vulnerable to Terrorism
In addition, we’ve spent tens of trillions on the “war on terror”,
but have failed to take steps to protect against the largest terrorist
threat of all: an attack on the power supplies to nuclear power plants.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which took out the power supply to a
nuclear power plant would cause a Fukushima-style meltdown, and spent
fuel pools are
extremely vulnerable to terrorism.
Indeed, failing to harden our electrical grid invites a terrorist EMP
attack because it is such an obvious vulnerability … its like waiving a
red flag in front of a bull.
Unless we harden our electrical system to withstand electrical
pulses, an EMP remains an attractive method for bad guys to bring the
U.S. to its knees.
Bottom line: Failing to harden our grid invites catastrophe from solar flares
and terrorists. It makes us
doubly vulnerable.
There’s An Easy Fix … Are We Smart Enough to Take It?
Japan’s nuclear meltdown, the economic crisis and the Gulf oil spill all happened for the same reason:
big companies cutting every corner in the book – and hiding the existence of huge risks – in order to make a little money.
There are
relatively easy fixes to the threat from solar flares.
The head of the leading consulting firm on the effect of
electromagnetic disruptions on our power grid – which was commissioned
to study the issue by the U.S. federal government – stated that it would
be
relatively inexpensive to reduce the vulnerability of our power grid:
What we’re proposing is to add some fairly small and inexpensive resistors in the transformers’ ground connections.
The addition of that little bit of resistance would significantly
reduce the amount of the geomagnetically induced currents that flow into
the grid.
***
We think it’s do-able for $40,000 or less per resistor. That’s less than what you pay for insurance for a transformer.
***
If you’re talking about the United States, there are about 5,000
transformers to consider this for. The Electromagnetic Pulse Commission
recommended it in a report they sent to Congress last year. We’re
talking about $150 million or so. It’s pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
Mechanical engineer Matthew Stein
notes (footnotes omitted):
There are nearly 450 nuclear reactors in the world, with
hundreds more being planned or under construction…. Imagine what havoc
it would wreak on our civilization and the planet’s ecosystems if we were to suddenly witness not just one or two nuclear meltdowns, but 400 or more! How likely is it that our world might experience an event that could ultimately cause hundreds of reactors to fail and melt down at approximately the same time? I venture to say that, unless we take significant protective measures, this apocalyptic scenario is not only possible, but probable.
***
In the past 152 years, Earth has been struck by roughly 100 solar storms,
causing significant geomagnetic disturbances (GMD), two of which were
powerful enough to rank as “extreme GMDs.” If an extreme GMD of such
magnitude were to occur today, in all likelihood, it would initiate a
chain of events leading to catastrophic failures at the vast
majority of our world’s nuclear reactors, similar to but over 100 times
worse than, the disasters at both Chernobyl and Fukushima.
***
The good news is that relatively affordable equipment and
processes could be installed to protect critical components in the
electric power grid and its nuclear reactors, thereby averting this
“end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it” scenario. The bad news is that
even though panels of scientists and engineers have studied the
problem, and the bipartisan Congressional electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
commission has presented a list of specific recommendations to Congress,
our leaders have yet to approve and implement any significant preventative measures.
***
Unfortunately, the world’s nuclear power plants, as they are
currently designed, are critically dependent upon maintaining connection
to a functioning electrical grid, for all but relatively short periods
of electrical blackouts, in order to keep their reactor cores
continuously cooled so as to avoid catastrophic reactor core meltdowns
and fires in storage ponds for spent fuel rods.
If an extreme GMD were to cause widespread grid collapse (which it
most certainly will), in as little as one or two hours after each
nuclear reactor facility’s backup generators either fail to start, or
run out of fuel, the reactor cores will start to melt down. After a few
days without electricity to run the cooling system pumps, the water bath
covering the spent fuel rods stored in “spent-fuel ponds” will boil
away, allowing the stored fuel rods to melt down and burn. Since the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) currently mandates that only one
week’s supply of backup generator fuel needs to be stored at each
reactor site, it is likely that, after we witness the spectacular
nighttime celestial light show from the next extreme GMD, we will have
about one week in which to prepare ourselves for Armageddon.
To do nothing is to behave like ostriches with our heads in the sand,
blindly believing that “everything will be okay” as our world drifts
towards the next natural, inevitable super solar storm and resultant
extreme GMD. Such a storm would end the industrialized world as we know it, creating almost incalculable suffering, death and environmental destruction on a scale not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.
***
The federal government recently sponsored a detailed scientific study
to better understand how much critical components of our national
electrical power grid might be affected by either a naturally occurring
GMD or a man-made EMP. Under the auspices of the EMP Commission and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and reviewed in depth by the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Academy of Sciences,
Metatech Corporation undertook extensive modeling and analysis of the
potential effects of extreme geomagnetic storms on the US electrical
power grid. Based upon a storm as intense as the 1921 storm, Metatech
estimated that within the United States, induced voltage and current
spikes, combined with harmonic anomalies, would severely damage or
destroy over 350 EHV power transformers critical to the functioning of
the US grid and possibly impact well over 2000 EHV transformers worldwide.
EHV transformers are made to order and custom-designed for each
installation, each weighing as much as 300 tons and costing well over $1
million. Given that there is currently a three-year waiting list for a
single EHV transformer (due to recent demand from China and India, lead
times grew from one to three years), and that the total global
manufacturing capacity is roughly 100 EHV transformers per year when the
world’s manufacturing centers are functioning properly, you can begin
to grasp the implications of widespread transformer losses.
The loss of thousands of EHV transformers worldwide would cause a
catastrophic grid collapse across much of the industrialized world. It
will take years, at best, for the industrialized world to put itself
back together after such an event, especially considering the fact that
most of the manufacturing centers that make this equipment will also be
grappling with widespread grid failure.
***
In the event of an extreme GMD-induced long-term grid collapse
covering much of the globe, if just half of the world’s spent fuel ponds
were to boil off their water and become radioactive, zirconium-fed
infernos, the ensuing contamination could far exceed the cumulative
effect of 400 Chernobyls.
***
The Congressionally mandated EMP Commission has studied the threat of
both EMP [i.e. an electromagnetic pulse set of by terrorists or
adversaries in war] and extreme GMD events and made recommendations to
the US Congress to implement protective devices and procedures to ensure
the survival of the grid and other critical infrastructures in either
event. John Kappenman, author of the Metatech study, estimates that it
would cost about $1 billion to build special protective devices into
the US grid to protect its EHV transformers from EMP or extreme GMD
damage and to build stores of critical replacement parts should some of
these items be damaged or destroyed. Kappenman estimates that
it would cost significantly less than $1 billion to store at least a
year’s worth of diesel fuel for backup generators at each US nuclear
facility and to store sets of critical spare parts, such as backup
generators, inside EMP-hardened steel containers to be available for
quick change-out in the event that any of these items were damaged by an
EMP or GMD.
For the cost of a single B-2 bomber or a tiny fraction of the
Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bank bailout, we could invest in
preventative measures to avert what might well become the end of life as
we know it. There is no way to protect against all possible
effects from an extreme GMD or an EMP attack, but we could implement
measures to protect against the worst effects. Since 2008, Congress has narrowly failed to pass legislation that would implement at least some of the EMP Commission’s recommendations.
***
Citizens can do their part to push for legislation to move toward this goal
and work inside our homes and communities to develop local resilience
and self reliance, so that in the event of a long-term grid-down
scenario, we might make the most of a bad situation. The same tools that
are espoused by the Transition movement for developing local
self-reliance and resilience to help cope with the twin effects of
climate change and peak oil could also serve communities well in the
event of an EMP attack or extreme GMD. If our country were to implement
safeguards to protect our grid and nuclear power plants from EMP, it
would also eliminate the primary incentive for a terrorist to launch an
EMP attack. The sooner we take these actions, the less chance that an
EMP attack will occur.
Will we insist that these inexpensive fixes to our electrical grid be
made? Or will we focus on over-blown dangers … and ignore the thing
most likely to actually get us?
