Posted on 08/14/2014 8:38:26 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
WASHINGTON — A persistent failure by federal lawmakers to protect the nation’s electric grid from attack isn’t stopping private sector efforts to prevent damage from a nuclear blast.
An Obama administration initiative to spend $7 billion on the development of the electric grid in six African nations, as Watchdog reported, earned a stern rebuke from a security expert concerned about the administration’s priorities.
But state level efforts are under way to protect the grid against solar flares and electromagnetic pulses.
As security experts work to raise awareness about surviving the potential destruction — caused by a shockwave after an explosion on the surface of the sun or nuclear weapons detonated in the Earth’s upper atmosphere — private companies are building technologies aimed at preventing the resultant damage.
Applied Energy, LLC., for example, is looking to test technology that prevents the electrical surge caused by an EMP.
Dan Princinsky, president of the fourteen-year-old Michigan-based company, wrote to Watchdog.org in April, saying his company’s technology was “the only patented product on the market that operates at the speed of current flow which is the only way to prevent the problem from occurring.”
“The only way to protect the grid is to get ahead of the event by using a product that works electro-magnetically so it can mitigate the problem as it is forming,” said Princinsky.
In a follow-up email, Princinsky told Watchdog.org he wondered why security experts appeared more concerned about surviving the damage created by an EMP than by preventing the damage in the first place.
Princinsky’s company is hardly alone.
EMP GRID Services, a consortium of electricity technology companies formed in April, began building in Pennsylvania for a Fortune 500 company a data center that could shield against EMPs and solar flares. On Aug. 8, the consortium announced a partnership with military contractor Armag Corporation to expand the kind of services it offers to protect electrical infrastructure.
Concern over the destruction inflicted by an EMP attack from North Korea has heightened since Congress created the first Congressional EMP Commission in 2001, but the electric grid’s vulnerability to disruptions associated with solar flares has been known for more than 150 years.
Industry watchers attribute the grid’s poor security to turf wars involving the federal government’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the international nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corporation, as well as a lack of urgency by both organizations.
The Foundation for Resilient Societies, in a July op-ed in the Capitol Hill publication The Hill, for example, blasted NERC and FERC for a May 2013 vote against improving the physical security standards for the grid after six men with AK-47 machine guns shot up a substation in California.
Only after FERC report about leaked almost a year later did the agency pressure NERC to improve physical security.
During his bid for the presidency during the 2012 election cycle, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich popularized the EMP threat as he countered political opponents who mocked his ideas.
George Noory, host of the popular late night radio show Coast to Coast AM, announced Aug. 4 the launch of a campaign, with the help of Joseph Farrah, founder and editor-in-chief of WND.com, to raise awareness about the EMP threat and urge Congress to act to protect the grid.
“It is not a matter of if, but when we will experience an EMP event or attack,” said Noory in a press statement.
CNBC reported at the end of July that billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer warned investors in a letter about the dangers of EMPs and solar flares.
“Why are we writing about this topic?” Singer wrote, “Because in any analysis of societal risk, EMP stands all by itself.”
hmmmm.....
yeah...it’s coming...
When the button is pushed, it will probably be Obama’s finger.
Power companies had better start ordering long lead material for rebuilding sub-stations.
DC would be in big trouble in the event of an EMP that took out all electronics in buildings and houses and cars the grid. Millions of employees in an instant jungle.
It behooves them to address the subject.
Our “Just in Time” logistical philosophy completely fails emergency preparation.
Microgrids and Synchrophasors
Microgrids
http://www.energy.gov/articles/how-microgrids-work
North American Synchrophasor Initiative
https://www.naspi.org/
The password is...
“Rent Seekers”.
I have bee assured and throughally berated by knowledgable FReepers that there’s no such thing as EMP and if there was it wouldn’t be any more destructive than popping a breaker on your fuse panel. So please stop trying to scare people.
ping
All righty then....
Sorry, but whoever you have been listening to is scientifically illiterate, as a whole lot of folks claiming carbon dioxide is a pollutant, or they nave some agenda to persue that's more important than the truth to them.
EMPs have occurred and plants need Carbon dioxide to survive.
Believe me there are a good number of trolls on here that believe with all they have that there is no such thing as EMP. One guy went off on me like a you wouldn't believe! He kept say how lightening proves that EMP was impossible and doesn't exist. Didn't matter what papers, studies or what researcher you presented his observations of lighten proves that EMP doesn't exist. When I asked him is technical educational training he had been a radio operator in the military which made him far more than even those at Livermore Lab of the EMP research center here in Albuquerque. He wasn't the only one believe me! Nor was he the craziest!
Might try reading “One Second After” by William Forstchen & the foward by Newt Gingrich.
A properly executed EMP nuke attack would take out the grid and all un-shielded semiconductor based electronics. The society would be back in the 1800’s in an instant. Predictions indicate 90% of the population dead in a year.
About worst disaster I could think of...... and we are VERY vulnerable.
Understood.
It's amazing how many people know so little, they don't know what they don't know.
I've reached an age at which I usually know enough about a subject to know what I don't know, which is a lot, sometimes.
On some subjects, I know enough to actually know it, and one of those subjects is EMPs.
I know enough to know thise knuckle draggers you encountered were wrong, and you were right.
I have read it, and could have written most of it.
A good book, I also recommend it to anyone to read.
It behooves them to address the subject.
Just think. No more tax bills.
Thats like the hell I’ve caught over Ebola. Per some you have to have sex with the effected person for three days and then eat their brains to get it, but per the CDC:
No known exposure
Persons with no known exposure were present in an EVD outbreak affected country* in the past 21 days with no low risk or high risk exposures.
1 Casual contact is defined as a) being within approximately 3 feet (1 meter) or within the room or care area for a prolonged period of time (e.g., healthcare personnel, household members) while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment (i.e., droplet and contact precautions–see Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations); or b) having direct brief contact (e.g., shaking hands) with an EVD case while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment (i.e., droplet and contact precautions–see Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations). At this time, brief interactions, such as walking by a person or moving through a hospital, do not constitute casual contact.
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/case-definition.html
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