1/14/2024 0 Comments Shield project officeOur electrical grid is constantly threatened by cyberattacks and hurricanes, solar storms and terrorist strikes, electromagnetic pulses, and earthquakes, any one of which can cause a long-term (potentially months, even years) blackout. The reason this scenario is even possible is that our country’s electrical infrastructure is exceedingly vulnerable. Almost overnight, our society would be transported back to the 1800’s. In 2011, the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant melted down because there was no power to cool the reactors after tsunamis disabled the area’s electrical grid. Cell phones would be fragile paperweights computers would be typewriters with two-hour lifespans and no printing capabilities. Cars and trucks would be useless in days. No running water or complex food production. Telecommunications satellites and law enforcement sewage and refrigerators gas pumps, banks, production factories hospitals. The entire grid can be shut down by destroying just nine critical transformer substations, like the one crippled in minutes by a team of armed attackers near San Jose, California in 2013.īut what if they were all to collapse? If the failure of just one would lead to almost irreparable societal harm, what would the failure of all sixteen lead to? It is a scenario that, while seemingly outlandish, is unsettlingly possible, because each one of those systems is critically and immutably reliant on one thing: electricity. In fact, Lloyd’s of London concluded that such a storm is so likely, and its effects so devastating, that it refuses to offer insurance against one. Over the next decade, research suggests we face a one in ten chance of losing much of our grid to a solar storm – a burst of radiation from the sun that would affect the Earth’s atmosphere and compromise our power grid. Our electrical grid is constantly threatened by cyberattacks and hurricanes, solar storms and terrorist strikes, electromagnetic pulses, and earthquakes.Īnd the odds are not in our favor. Yet the critical electric infrastructure we depend on to sustain our society has been built for efficiency, not for resilience. Even minor blackouts cause severe disruption. We rely on an uninterrupted supply of power to bring food to our supermarkets, water into our homes, and prosperity to our citizens. Without electricity, our way of life is untenable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |