Are We Prepared for a Catastrophic Solar Storm?

There's a great organization called EMPact America that is trying to protect the grid against disruptions from both solar and man-made EMP which would create long term blackouts and massive cascading failures of every infrastructure that depends on electricity.

There is a federal bill - HR 668 the SHIELD Act which would help protect the grid that needs to be passed asap. go to www.shieldact.com now and join other members of EMPact America to support this bill.

You can also quickly and easily send an email to your federal representatives by going to www.guardthegrid.com.

There's no time to waste!

Interesting video:
vimeo.com/channels/empactamerica#25164477

Interesting stuff – I hope our leadership takes heed!

More about these Black Swan events on Twitter at: DarkSwan2012

I don't understand... how come the power plant cannot use the electricity that it is generating to run the cooling pool pumps? Why wouldn't the nuke plant be self-sustaining? Pardon my ignorance....

And to think - there are people that still think nuclear power is the future. Idiots!

What an ridiculous knee jerk observation about nuke plant safety. If there are 30 days worth of diesel fuel at nuke sites I'm pretty sure they could get a diesel tanker to whatever site needed within 30 days to keep the generators running past 30 days.

Seriously, why do nuclear power plants need outside power in the first place?

either a reality or a plan of the Illuminati to keep us scared. i wish the Annuaki returns to give us more knowledge of the universe.

Every piece of wire (or any conductor for that matter) would act like a secondary winding in a transformer with a couple million volts on the primary winding. There is no reason to imagine that any of the electronics at the power plant would be working, so the plant can't make its own power, likewise, the emergency cooling generators are fried. And so are all the tanker trucks electrical systems as well, the trucks that in a normal situation would transport new electronics and diesel to operate any emergency systems.

@bluzzit34 : The short answer is that by regulation, reactors are not allowed to operate without redundant sources of power available to them. In this case, thier main power source would be dead, and by design and by regulation, the reactor would be shut down. Therefor no power generation. The backup generators will only operate essential systems, and I dont believe much of the power generation loop falls under that.

They can suppliment thier own power... but they have to be running. If there is a situation where they dont have outside power, they cant opperate legally. Vicious cycle.

@Boka : An event as described here will take out EVERYTHING, not just nuclear power plants. planes could be potentially falling out of the sky, landing on cities, all food stores spoiled and lost. The power plants would be one drop in a big bucket of problems if it pans out like this article wants you to believe.

I also want to point out that unless there is a complete component level system failure (such as mulout describes), the danger of meltdown in this article is far overstated. Yes fukashima experienced a meltdown brought on by a complete loss of external power and generator suppliment. That complete blackout happened with in a day, though... not a month. Had fukashima had a month of generator power post earthquake, very little of the resulting problems would have occured.

Reactors have cooldown periods. 30 days of generator power would likely be sufficient to both cool the reactor and take other emergency precautions (insert additional chemical shim, bring in additional deisel fuel for generators, move fuel bundles to reduce the likelyhood of the storage pools overheating, etc). The big problem at fukashima wasnt just the power loss, it was the timeframe and moment in which it happened. No time to cool the reactor, no time for preparation.

wouldn’t a radio wave black box(well grounded metal mesh) stop all bad stuff from the solar flare? (and shield those precious generators) power may back feed on the transmission lines but there would be overload relays in place to stop that. also I am not sure how the new computer controlled diesels would fare but the old school mechanically controlled diesels would be fine. (other than spark plug wire no electronics) so what is everyone scared of other than the grid. are the transmission lines all going to melt? I know the substations would need work but we should be able to duck tape everything for long enough to keep our food cold. Or am I missing something here?

@Boka...You sir are an idiot. Unless you can show me a renewable way to produce large amounts of power without covering the state of Nevada in Solar Panels, then Nuclear Power in its many forms is our only option. Renewable Power won't be the norm for sometime. Much as Fossil Fuels won't be the norm for much longer.

As I understand (and I'm niether an astrophysicist or an EE... just a MechE), isolated electronics shouldnt be severely effected by a CME. From what I can glean from experts, our power grid is severely affected due to the grid of transmission lines acting as a sort of antennae or large secondary coil (pick your analogy, not sure which is more applicable) to the magnetic fields that spike, which induced a DC spike in the transmission lines that melts the coils in the transformers, which is why the grid goes down.

I was under the impression that small circuits (such as control circuits for generators, cars, computers, or control room equipment on protected circuits in reactors) dont have enough mass/area to pick up substantial DC inductance from the spike in magnetic fields. I think that its the vast expanse of power transmission lines that allow what locally may be only a modest spike in ground current (and therefor magnetic fields), but over tha vast distance of power lines accumulates to a much larger DC inductance.

And, like I said, not being an EE, I'll caveat that with a hearty "or I could be completely mistaken"....

Vale'-Varka Systems is already producing products to protect against an EMP and a Solar Flare.

Just Google it...

What I would like to know is what about the vehicles we drive? I like to read science fiction novels, Solar Flare talks about such a magnitude CME that everything electronic gets fried. It also state the possibility of the Earth's magnetic North and South poles switching, so that even generators are unable to function.

I see that an EMP would damage the computers in our vehicles, planes would definitely be affected due to how high above the Earth's surface they fly. They are not isolated from EMP pulses.

I doubt the Earth's poles would flip but even if they did everything that uses DC as a power source would have to be wired differently because the way electrons flow would be reversed.

In any case I believe that this would explain why they would not be able to take a taker truck to the generators. I hate computers in cars anyway. They make it harder and much more expensive to repair your vehicle.

A lot of this is purely speculation and could possibly be wrong but how is one to learn unless they are shown that they are wrong about something and then shown what is actually correct? I do not mind being wrong, so if you find something wrong in my statements then say something about it and explain it.

most of you really don't understand the magnitude of a disaster of this scale, the entire planet would return to the dark ages, this would mean a world wide war for food and water, it would be quite a feat for homeland security to managed the refueling of the nuclear plant's generators (if they are even operational) while the human death toll starts to run into the 100's of millions, probably billions, thousands more dying from radiation may be the least of thier concerns

Imagine: days, months or maybe years without the internet... OMG, THE HORROR! DX

Bear Grylls: Time to drink my piss.

S. Brandon et al,
If the poles switched DC would still flow the same way. The cause of the electron flow is an imbalance of electrons on the two parts of the battery. It is like holding a water bottle upside down, switching hands does not make water flow into the water bottle.

A flip in the magnetic core has somewhat unknown and serious implications, because it indicates a shift in the earths core. My guess, earth quakes, super volcanic eruptions in the worst care.

Depending on the shift, it may even weaken our shielding against future solar activities. I also strongly doubt that a solar flare would cause it to flip (unless it was strong enough to be an extinction even on its own.).

Truth is there are 100s of ways for the human race to be taken out by natural forces, super volcanoes, meteor strikes, alien invasion (for a galactic super highway),
and we need to put things in to place to warn about all and have responses for each. This is no argument for or against nuclear plants or anything else, it is about ensuring we have adequate notice and resources to respond to events we can protect from.

The space race should be on, with intent to settle other worlds, because worlds are fragile, and while it may not be in 10 or a 100 years, at some point the Earth will be uninhabitable.

Doom sayers find the absolute worst possibility, that does not mean we can not put preventative and responsive measures in place to minimize impact.

for protecton at nuclear plant. how about faraday cages over esssential systems?

Surge Arrestors are installed all over the power grid, and will short the high DC spikes to ground, so transformers won't "melt", unless someone messed up in the design and decided not to install these. Every EHV substation should have them installed. If these fail, they will either fail closed, which will cause protective equipment to operate, or fail open, which will cause overvoltages. Overvoltage protective devices are often installed (but not always), so these would likely isolate the lines, also preventing transformers from melting.

This is super hyped beyond reality. What would most likely happen is breakers on the bulk electric system would operate in mass, causing wide scale blackouts (but relatively little system damage), and would take a day to several weeks to bring the whole system back on line. Your ice cream might melt. But the Nukes would continue to be operated safely - they would likely get offsite power back within 8 hours to a day, depending on how wide spread the blackout was. The good thing to know is this sort of thing is practiced on a regular basis by grid operators, by law.

Since two years, the media are filled with the end-of-the-world scenarios... I wander if it is not something planned to prepare us for the additional costs and taxes?

It's time to stop this sensationalism to sale reading, listening or viewing time.

It is the same with cigarettes; collect taxes, but stop printing on packs "smoking causes cancer". If someone is willing to use it, he has the right to make decisions affecting him, without being affected by the opinions of "dogooders".

Up to now, over 3000 test atomic explosions were made in air, water, land and space, did anybody ask my opinion before or took a serious consideration how this will affect my future? No!

"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." Luke 21:25-27