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Here's How The White House Would Deal With A Huge Solar Storm
http://www.iflscience.com/space/white-house-releases-strategic-plan-prepare-major-solar-storms
?itok=AS_NcAkH
The worst solar storm to hit the Earth in recorded history happened in 1859. Known as the Carrington Event, it generated auroras as far south as Cuba and caused havoc with the primitive electrical system of the time, generating fires in telegraph stations. It’s estimated that such a large solar storm will occur roughly every 150 years or so. If one of a similar magnitude were to hit the Earth now, with a society much more dependent on electronics and technology, it would undoubtedly have catastrophic consequences.
Due to this increasing threat, the White House’s National Science and Technology Council has released a National Space Weather Action Plan, in which it details a strategic plan to prepare for an event such as a major solar storm. The document warns that with electrical systems becoming increasingly interconnected, if one were to be knocked out, it could cause a cascade of system failures. It recommends a federally-coordinated approach to a number of procedures, from reducing the vulnerability of those infrastructures deemed most at risk, to increasing our forecasting and communications abilities.
The Sun is constantly ejecting charged subatomic particles in the form of solar winds, some of which hit our atmosphere. It is this that causes the northern lights, or auroras, though most of the particles that reach us are deflected by Earth’s magnetic field. Occasionally, particularly large flares will burst from the Sun and the particles will make it through our magnetic field. A recent study has estimated that there is a 12 percent chance that one of these “megaflares” will erupt within the decade, sending a massive solar storm our way.
We’ve already had a taster of what might happen if we were struck by a storm, albeit on a much smaller scale. Back in 1989 Canada got hit by solar storm that created a power surge on the electrical grid. Within 90 seconds this caused the shut-down of Hydro-Québec’s electrical system, leaving millions without power for nine hours. If this were to happen on a much grander scale, the damage would be huge.
One estimate suggests that if a storm the size of the Carrington Event were to hit today, the cost of the clean-up in the U.S. alone would be somewhere between $1-2 trillion (£657 billion to £1.3 trillion) during the first year, with a recovery that could take up to a decade. Every facet of our lives would be impacted, from transportation, communication, banking and government, as we live in an increasingly electronic world.
The good news for me is my old Ford Truck. I suspect it'll be able to run afterward.
11 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
silly things that are sciency like this.
Almost had me there. 
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/a-perfect-storm-of-planetary-proportions/hundreds-of-fukushimas
A Perfect Storm of Planetary Proportions
<< Back to the main article
Hundreds of Fukushimas?
In a massive geomagnetic storm that could trigger a long-term power outage across large portions of the globe, the world's 400-some nuclear plants would be particularly vulnerable to catastrophic failure, for two reasons.
First, as events in Japan last March made clear, nuclear power plants often have inadequate backup power on-site. At the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, even if the diesel generators had not been flooded, they had only enough fuel for seven days, the industry norm.
To sustain emergency operations beyond a week, all nuclear plants require a functioning connection to the grid. That's because even after nuclear fission ceases, fuel rods in the reactor cores and spent fuel pools continue to generate decay heat for years, requiring cooling with water circulation pumps. It can take several megawatts of power to operate that equipment. So when both on-site and outside power supplies suffer a long-term outage, as they did at Fukushima, the result is a core meltdown. Even worse would be a fire in a spent fuel pool, which can hold 10 times as much fuel as the core but has no containment structure.
Nuclear plants are also vulnerable because they're so big. To feed a gigawatt of electricity from a nuclear plant into the grid requires many high-voltage transformers and transmission lines, and each connection is an entry point for geomagnetically induced currents. In a comparison I did of nuclear plants versus other types of power plants and substations, there were 50 percent more GICs at nuclear plants than at other facilities.
So a massive solar storm that knocks out nuclear power plants' ability to transmit power and destroys their backup power systems could very well trigger dozens or even hundreds of meltdowns.
—John Kappenman
A Perfect Storm of Planetary Proportions
<< Back to the main article
Hundreds of Fukushimas?
In a massive geomagnetic storm that could trigger a long-term power outage across large portions of the globe, the world's 400-some nuclear plants would be particularly vulnerable to catastrophic failure, for two reasons.
First, as events in Japan last March made clear, nuclear power plants often have inadequate backup power on-site. At the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, even if the diesel generators had not been flooded, they had only enough fuel for seven days, the industry norm.
To sustain emergency operations beyond a week, all nuclear plants require a functioning connection to the grid. That's because even after nuclear fission ceases, fuel rods in the reactor cores and spent fuel pools continue to generate decay heat for years, requiring cooling with water circulation pumps. It can take several megawatts of power to operate that equipment. So when both on-site and outside power supplies suffer a long-term outage, as they did at Fukushima, the result is a core meltdown. Even worse would be a fire in a spent fuel pool, which can hold 10 times as much fuel as the core but has no containment structure.
Nuclear plants are also vulnerable because they're so big. To feed a gigawatt of electricity from a nuclear plant into the grid requires many high-voltage transformers and transmission lines, and each connection is an entry point for geomagnetically induced currents. In a comparison I did of nuclear plants versus other types of power plants and substations, there were 50 percent more GICs at nuclear plants than at other facilities.
So a massive solar storm that knocks out nuclear power plants' ability to transmit power and destroys their backup power systems could very well trigger dozens or even hundreds of meltdowns.
—John Kappenman
