[[_nursery]]❌
mind map document (need an account on Lucid)
Main intro video suggested from Bret: https://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education/solarstorms-mat-stein
Outline:
- Coronal Mass Ejections / Solar Storms and their frequency and severity
- Transformers (electrical grid component)’s susceptibility to the above
- Significant solar storm events
- interconnectedness-of-the-electrical-grid and why this is a problem
- societal impact of mass-blackouts
- The risk of nuclear power plant meltdown in the case of a power failure
-
Remediation and prevention
- retrofit
- early warning + shutdown
- after disaster: isolating sections of the grid to re-start
Questions:
collected notes from Fairewinds video:
1921 last big solar storm 1859 even bigger (carrington event)
Achilles heels in grid: transformers. susceptible to EMP
solar storm doesn’t effect small electronics. but will fry transformers. solar storm effects “big wires” and transformers (sort of on the “outside” / grid-side of the power plant, not necessarily effecting inside the plant).
transformers:
- 100 tons each
- $10 million each
- custom built and designed
- 3 year waiting list. could maybe get one in a year if everything is going well and rushed
there aren’t enough spare parts in the world to fix half a hemisphere’s grid infrastructure
Arnie Gundersen asked in 2021 Regulatory information conference asked chairman of NRC about solar storm EMP: “last thing on the agenda relative to the other regulatory agendas”
William Graham, chief science advisor to Reagan. Chairman of bipartisan EMP Commission. Letter written a few months after Fukushima: warning to NRC. he says in letter: risk is 1/8 every decade.
“can protect the whole grid for the price of a B2 Bomber.”
Army Corps of engineers warned for 50 years about levies around New Orleans re: the next big storm.
those who agree this is a problem:
- department of defense
- oak ridge national lab
- sandia national lab
- los alamos national lab
high-energy particles from “sun burp” causes electrical spike in transformers, burns out many of them. 50% or more, typically.
1989 geo mag storm, 1/10th strength of 1921. wiped out three transformers in Quebec, NJ, UK.
2003 lower intensity but longer duration (than ’89) but less than 1/10th% of expected storm: 14 transformers in south africa. had to ration electricity around the country for a year.
multiplying by 10 does not give the proper idea: every scale up exceeds an important threshold that tumbles into larger problems.
2003 niagra plant failure cascaded to 50 million people.
nuclear power plants have a week’s worth of backup fuel (by mandate. some keep a month.)
once these run out, they begin to melt down.
104 nuclear power plants in the US.
the EMP commission estimates 9 month min, multiple years at most, to get things back up and running.
need to disconnect grid, re-start pieces, depending on amount of local damage. dense areas have much bigger problems.
remediation:
curtis birnbach. large vacuum tube devices. tested at EMP testing facility. can handle huge amounts of power, redirect solar/emp spikes into the ground.
$2 Billion to protect all transformers. $1 Billion put EMP hardened containers with backup critical systems + year’s worth of backup fuel.
NERC north american elec reliability corp. private industry insider’s group. FERC federal energy regulatory commission.
FERC looks at grid threats at a conference. they determine EMP/Solar are number 1 and 2 events - but black swans. HILF report. high impact, low frequency event risk to north american bulk power system. suggests private industry pay for it. NERC freaks out. FERC fires HILF authors and create new “all good news” report.
FERC requests solar storm safety standards from NERC. the NERC outline requires training for people, but doesn’t mandate any hardware or detectors.
decisions are required in less than a minute - to shut down entire system. so: “training for people” is sort of a bullshit “solution”.
only current solutions:
- early warning and shutdown
- get an early warning from satellites that maybe a storm is going to hit us
- need to get presidential approval to shut the national grid down because maybe we’re getting hit.
- need to make this decision quickly at risk of looking like idiots. fast-moving storm can hit in 12hrs, slower in 2-3 days. 24/48hrs notice in general.
- hardware retrofit to protect transformers
“do your best to change the world, do your best to be ready for the changes in the world” - Mat Stein
look into:
- solar maximum. how often? what does this mean? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_maximum
- William Graham letter to NRC https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1318/ML13183A027.pdf
- Metatech study “learning to live in a dangerous solar system” http://www.metatechcorp.com/aps/Danger.pdf
- check number of nuclear power plants in the US : ~100
- what exactly is “the grid”?
- what does a transformer do? (“interconnect the grid”)
- which parts of the grid/country would be disconnectable/restartable.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/short-circuiting-civilization/
https://www.eiscouncil.org/BlackSky.aspx - associated with Curtis Birnbach, patent-holder for transformer protection devices