Solar Storms Impact – Blackouts

Solar Storms Impact – Blackouts

The Big One for space physicists struck on 28 August 1859. The sun had blasted a billion-ton magnetic bubble of protons and the like right at Earth. On smashing into the planet's own magnetic cocoon at several million kilometers per hour, the bubble dumped its energy, pushing the solar-driven aurora from its customary arctic latitudes to overhead of Cuba. This once-in-500-years “solar superstorm” crippled telegraph systems for a day or two across the United States and Europe but otherwise was mainly remembered for its dramatic light show. Now that our world has evolved into a so-called cyberelectrosphere of modern electronics, we can hardly hope to fare as well. Today, the charged-particle radiation and electromagnetic fury of a geomagnetic superstorm would fry satellites, degrade GPS navigation, disrupt radio communications, and trigger continent-wide blackouts lasting weeks or longer. Even a storm of the century would wreak havoc. That's why space physicists are so anxious to forecast space weather storms accurately. If predicting a hurricane a few days ahead can help people prepare for a terrestrial storm's onslaught, they reason, predicting solar storms should help operators of susceptible systems prepare for an electromagnetic storm.

Solar Storms Impact – Nuclear Meltdown

Solar Storms can collapse nuclear power plants causing an impact comparable to 30 Chernobyls

Tabor, July 2011

[Damon, Popular Science, “SUN STROKE”, Lexis, BJM]

One of the biggest disasters we face would begin about 18 hours after the sun spit out a 10-billionton ball of plasma-something it has done before and is sure to do again. When the ball, a charged cloud of particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME), struck the Earth, electrical currents would spike through the power grid. Transformers would be destroyed. Lights would go out. Food would spoil and-since the entire transportation system would also be shut down-go unrestocked. Within weeks, backup generators at nuclear power plants would have run down, and the electric pumps that supply water to cooling ponds, where radioactive spent fuel rods are stored, would shut off. Multiple meltdowns would ensue. "Imagine 30 Chernobyls across the U.S.," says electrical engineer John Kappenman, an expert on the grid's vulnerability to space weather. A CME big enough to take out a chunk of the grid is what scientists and insurers call a high consequence, low-frequency event. Many space-weather scientists say the Earth is due for one soon. Although CMEs can strike anytime, they are closely correlated to highs in the 11-year sunspot cycle. The current cycle will peak in July 2013. The most powerful CME in recorded history occurred during a solar cycle with a peak similar to the one scientists are predicting in 2013. During the so-called Carrington Event in 1859, electrical discharges in the U.S. shocked telegraph operators and set their machines on fire. A CME in 1921 disrupted radio across the East Coast and telephone operations in most of Europe. In a 2008 National Academy of Sciences report, scientists estimated that a 1921-level storm could knock out 350 transformers on the American grid, leaving 130 million people without electricity. Replacing broken transformers would take a long time because most require up to two years to manufacture. Once outside power is lost, nuclear plants have diesel generators that can pump water to spent-fuel cooling pools for up to 30 days. The extent of the meltdown threat is well-documented. A month before the Fukushima plant in Japan went offline in March, the Foundation for Resilient Societies, a committee of engineers, filed a petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommending the augmentation of nuclear plants' emergency backup systems. The petition claims that a severe solar storm would be far worse than a 9.0-magnitude quake and could leave about two thirds of the country's nuclear plants without power for one to two years.

Solar Storms Impact – Laundry List

A solar storm would kill communication, financial transactions, corrode pipelines, destroy the grid, and cost the US 2 trillion dollars

Vastag 6-27 – award-winning science and medical journalist for the Washington Post (Brian, 6-27-2011, The Star, “As the Sun Awakens, ‘Space Weather’ Could Threaten the Grid,” http://www.star.com.jo/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22975&catid=39:science&Itemid=128) EB
Such a “Carrington event” will happen again someday, but our wired civilization will suffer losses far greater than a few telegraph shacks. Communications satellites will be knocked offline. Financial transactions, timed and transmitted via those satellite, will fail, causing millions or billions in losses. The GPS system will go wonky. Astronauts on the space station will huddle in a shielded module, as they have done three times in the past decade due to “space weather”, the scientific term for all of the sun’s freaky activity. Flights between North America and Asia, over the North Pole, will have to be rerouted, as they were in April during a weak solar storm at a cost to the airlines of $100,000 a flight. And oil pipelines, particularly in Alaska and Canada, will suffer corrosion as they, like power lines, conduct electricity from the solar storm. But the biggest impact will be on the modern marvel known as the power grid. And experts warn that the grid is not ready. In 2008, the National Academy of Sciences stated that an 1859-level storm could knock out power in parts of the northeastern and northwestern United States for months, even years. Report co-author John Kappenmann estimated that about 135 million Americans would be forced to revert to a pre-electric lifestyle or relocate. Water systems would fail. Food would spoil. Thousands could die. The financial cost: Up to $2 trillion, one-seventh the annual US gross domestic product. Utilities say they’re studying the issue, with an eye toward understanding how to protect the grid by powering down sections of it during an hours-long solar storm. Their efforts are motivated, in part, by the sun’s increasingly frequent outbursts. Every 11 to 12 years, solar activity ramps up. After a quiet season, the sun is now spitting out flares again, with activity expected to peak in 2013 and 2014, said Dean Pesnell, a solar scientist at Goddard. “The sun is not partisan, it doesn’t listen to diplomacy, and sanctions don’t work,” said Peter Huessy, president of GeoStrategic Analysis. Huessy wants Congress to enact rules that would force power companies to better protect the power grid. “The sun has its own clock. And we don’t know what that clock is, except for once every hundred years or so, it has a coronary.”
A geomagnetic storm would deprive people of water, food, medication, healthcare, fuel, and power for years; cause nuclear meltdowns; and cost $2 trillion—the US might never recover

Brooks 9 – consultant for New Science (Michael, 3-23-2009, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, “Space Storm Alert: 90 Seconds from Catastrophe,” http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/7927.pdf) EB
First to go - immediately for some people - is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that. There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. Our just-in-time culture for delivery networks may represent the pinnacle of efficiency, but it means that supermarket shelves would empty very quickly - delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations. Back-up generators would run at pivotal sites - but only until their fuel ran out. For hospitals, that would mean about 72 hours of running a bare-bones, essential care only, service. After that, no more modern healthcare. 72 hours of healthcare remaining The truly shocking finding is that this whole situation would not improve for months, maybe years: melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced. "From the surveys I've done, you might have a few spare transformers around, but installing a new one takes a well-trained crew a week or more," says Kappenman. "A major electrical utility might have one suitably trained crew, maybe two." Within a month, then, the handful of spare transformers would be used up. The rest will have to be built to order, something that can take up to 12 months. Even when some systems are capable of receiving power again, there is no guarantee there will be any to deliver. Almost all natural gas and fuel pipelines require electricity to operate. Coal-fired power stations usually keep reserves to last 30 days, but with no transport systems running to bring more fuel, there will be no electricity in the second month. 30 days of coal left Nuclear power stations wouldn't fare much better. They are programmed to shut down in the event of serious grid problems and are not allowed to restart until the power grid is up and running. With no power for heating, cooling or refrigeration systems, people could begin to die within days. There is immediate danger for those who rely on medication. Lose power to New Jersey, for instance, and you have lost a major centre of production of pharmaceuticals for the entire US. Perishable medications such as insulin will soon be in short supply. "In the US alone there are a million people with diabetes," Kappenman says. "Shut down production, distribution and storage and you put all those lives at risk in very short order." Help is not coming any time soon, either. If it is dark from the eastern seaboard to Chicago, some affected areas are hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away from anyone who might help. And those willing to help are likely to be ill-equipped to deal with the sheer scale of the disaster. "If a Carrington event happened now, it would be like a hurricane Katrina, but 10 times worse," says Paul Kintner, a plasma physicist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In reality, it would be much worse than that. Hurricane Katrina's societal and economic impact has been measured at $81 billion to $125 billion. According to the NAS report, the impact of what it terms a "severe geomagnetic storm scenario" could be as high as $2 trillion. And that's just the first year after the storm. The NAS puts the recovery time at four to 10 years. It is questionable whether the US would ever bounce back.
Unless prepared for, the next large Solar Storm will be the worst natural occurring disaster in human history, destroying societies in days, killing 9 out of 10 Americans

Unruh 10’

[Bob Unruh staff writer of WorldNet daily, august 12, 10’ http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=190721] JB

More horrifying than the plague of Black Death across Europe. More costly in lives than World War II. Financially, it could make the Katrina repairs look like a pocketful of change. And it's not a matter of if, but when. That's the alarming warning issued by John G. Kappenman, owner of Storm Analysis Consultants and an expert on the dangers of electromagnetic pulse damage to modern society, with a list of qualifications after his name as long as a phone book. The issue of EMP dangers to the Earth – either from a CME, a coronal mass ejection, which is an eruption of power from the sun, or from a nuclear-triggered EMP wave intended to destroy a society – have been the subject of multiple reports in recent months. WND reported just days ago that the U.S. House authorized plans to defend America's power grid against such dangers, but the Senate left citizens to fend for themselves, eliminating the contingency plans. Kappenman, interviewed recently on the radio program "OffTheGridNews," explained that never before has civilization faced what could be coming, because historic storms hit before people were so dependant on electricity and all that it does, from turning on a cell phone to powering the pumps fueling the transportation system to keeping food from spoiling. Do you want to keep up on the EMP threat? The domino effect, he explained, is what could cause deaths in the millions. Millions? Really? Yes, he said. "The severity of the storm we're talking about here [could produce] widespread massive damage to the power grid," he said. "That could cause maybe a four to10 year sort of damage to the power grid … and an inability to restore that power grid. "This is clearly not something you ever want to experience firsthand, it could lead to millions of casualties,"' he said. But would losing power cause that much trouble? Not for an hour or two, but for several years, yes, he said. "Within a matter of just a few hours, you'd worry about the loss of potable water for major metro areas. You'd lose the ability to pump and treat sewage. Within a matter of a day or so you'd be concerned about the loss of perishable foods. With a few days, you would have exhausted the food supplies available. "Then within a matter of three days you have probably lost total ability to maintain any sort of telecommunication infrastructure," he said. "We could be looking at a scenario here that far exceeds the casualties of any war, any natural disaster that humanity has ever experienced. And it may not be limited to North America." When the U.S. Senate earlier rejected House plans to make preparations for such a disaster, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., blasted the decision. "While one part of the federal government was warning us of possible solar electromagnetic-pulse damage to our electric grid, a key Senate commission approved a bill to ignore this threat," he said. "It's particularly ironic since the Senate amended a bill, H.R. 5026, approved unanimously by the House that would specifically protect the grid against solar EMP and other physical threats," he said. WND has reported for years on the devastating danger from an EMP attack that could be launched by a second-rate missile system against America. The concern is that any nuclear detonation that could be launched into the atmosphere anywhere from 25 to 250 miles above the United States could decimate the nation's electric grid, essentially transporting it instantly back to an era of mechanical machines and agriculture. One estimate just months ago suggested an effective EMP attack could leave nine out of 10 Americans dead. Bartlett explained that the danger also comes from naturally occurring EMP signals from sources such as a solar storm. Kappenman is one of the main investigators for the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP Commission). He also has testified before the U.S. House Science Committee on the importance of geomagnetic storm forecasting for the electric power industry. He's also analyzed the situation for FEMA, contributed to a 2008 U.S. National Academy of Sciences Report on "Severe Space Weather Events – Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts Workshop Report Committee on the Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe Space Weather Events" and is a member of the Joint U.S. Dept of Energy/NERC Steering Committee for developing and planning a conference on High Impact/Low Frequency (HILF) Threats to the U.S. power grids. Bill Heid, who runs Solutions from Science, which offers a number of remedies for the possibility of extended power outages and food shortages, said the fact that such a "surge" of power would accumulate in the power grid like a radio wave collects in an antenna means that the most critical components of the grid – the massive transformers that regulate power flow – probably would be hit hardest. The transformers, sometimes weighing in at 200 tons, cannot be replaced at the drop of a hat, nor are there a multitude of backups available. That, he explained, is why Kappenman estimated recovery could take up to 10 years. The units would have to be manufactured, delivered and installed. And how would one install a 200-ton transformer without local access to power equipment (run by diesel pumped by electric pumps) and other such conveniences in the modern world? Also, how would one ship such equipment without being able to pump fuel into a cargo ship?

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