Posted on 06/20/2011 10:09:45 AM PDT by justlittleoleme
North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states, says Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA nuclear weapons analyst and president of EMPact America, a citizens lobbying group.
Samore, who handles arms control and non-proliferation issues, warned that “additional strong sanctions will be imposed on the North with the support of Russia and China."
North Korea’s nuclear tests have been dismissed as failures by some analysts because of their low explosive yield. But Dr. Pry believes they bore the “signature” of the Russian-designed “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting more gamma radiation than a 25-megaton nuclear weapon.
Rep. Trent Franks, who authored the SHIELD Act, warned of “catastrophic consequences” should Congress fail to act.
“The U.S. society and economy are so critically dependent upon the availability of electricity that a significant collapse of the grid, precipitated by a major natural or man-made EMP event, could result in catastrophic civilian casualties,” he said. “This vulnerability, if left unaddressed, could have grave, societal altering consequences.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
If China's economy looks like it will implode soon, the old men who run things will want to figure out a way to hold off collapse for a few years. One way would be to intimidate other countries into paying tribute to China. Get some from India, some from Taiwan, some from Japan. Make some deal with Russia to take over Siberian resources.
We can see it coming soon. An aggressor nation has the advantage of being able to decide when hostilities will commence, and not have to spend on military resources until it's time to prepare to strike. China has shifted from building their economy to enhancing their offensive capabilities. They are building their deep water navy capabilities, and their ability to project power far from their shores.
Electrical generation would be inside the building as far as I know. Some designs default to a shut down condition if they have an emergency.
Backup generators would probably be outside the building and not protected. Probably depends on the facility.
Its well known that vacuum tubes are fairly safe from EMP, nothing secret about that.
Pretty much anything with a solid state device in it will be fried. Depends on the distance from the blast and any protection the device has. The electrical system will be down for a long long time if it were to occur.
Whoa! What did it do? Blow out all their candles?
No reason to start the plant up until the power distribution system has been rebuilt. Other than to power itself that is.
My point is that they simply cannot have tested an EMP at any kind of yield, or else the South Koreans would have seen some effects from it.
I think all this EMP stuff is hysterical fantasy.
Codswallow. When they test it’s underground.
EMP is quite real. During the early days of nuclear testing there were several cases of the EMP pulse causing significant damage.
All nuclear bombs generate an EMP pulse. If the intent is to use that pulse as weapon then the higher the bomb is detonated the more damage the EMP pulse does.
Whether NK or Iran has the capability is up to some degree of debate. According to most public reports NK has tested a small nuclear weapon. Iran is apparently going to have enough material in a couple months for their own. Both are led by unstable dictators.
Iran has the ability to put a small payload in orbit. NK has significant medium range missiles capable of carrying a nuclear payload.
So where is the fantasy?
Show me the evidence of EMP-caused damage on a non-local scale. To go from a localized phenomenon to a continent-busting scale is a huge leap, and one I do not believe is within the capabilities of the North Koreans.
Further to my last post: when I say on a non-local scale, I mean to say, on the scale of what the doomsayers spout about EMP: cars’ ECUs fried, all ground-based electronics destroyed, all power subsystems destroyed, etc. I am not talking about frying a nav computer on an aircraft in the vicinity of the airburst—this is a well-known effect and is the reason combat aircraft systems are hardened.
I’m not your lackey and its not my job to solve your ignorance. Do your own research and educate yourself.
EMP on a continent scale is only a question of bomb size and burst altitude. If one bomb isn’t big enough just add a couple more smaller ones.
EMP only requires a nuclear bomb, which the NKs have. They don’t currently have the high altitude delivery systems but Iran does.
Oh sure, as North Korea launches it’s EMP missile to be detonated over Kansas, all our guys in our nuclear submarine fleets will have a good laugh, and go back to playing checkers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
E1
The E1 pulse is the very fast component of nuclear EMP. The E1 component is a very brief but intense electromagnetic field that can quickly induce very high voltages in electrical conductors. The E1 component causes most of its damage by causing electrical breakdown voltages to be exceeded. E1 is the component that can destroy computers and communications equipment and it changes too fast for ordinary lightning protectors to provide effective protection against it.
The mechanism for a 400 km high altitude burst EMP: gamma rays hit the atmosphere between 20–40 km altitude, ejecting electrons which are then deflected sideways by the Earth’s magnetic field. This makes the electrons radiate EMP over a massive area. Because of the curvature and downward tilt of Earth’s magnetic field over the USA, the maximum EMP occurs south of the detonation and the minimum occurs to the north.[17]
The E1 component is produced when gamma radiation from the nuclear detonation knocks electrons out of the atoms in the upper atmosphere. The electrons begin to travel in a generally downward direction at relativistic speeds (more than 90 percent of the speed of light). In the absence of a magnetic field, this would produce a large pulse of electric current vertically in the upper atmosphere over the entire affected area. The Earth’s magnetic field acts on these electrons to change the direction of electron flow to a right angle to the geomagnetic field. This interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field and the downward electron flow produces a very large, but very brief, electromagnetic pulse over the affected area.[18]
Physicist Conrad Longmire has given numerical values for a typical case of the E1 pulse produced by a second generation nuclear weapon such as those used in high altitude tests of Operation Fishbowl in 1962. According to him, the typical gamma rays given off by the weapon have an energy of about 2 MeV (million electron volts). When these gamma rays collide with atoms in the mid-stratosphere, the gamma rays knock out electrons. This is known as the Compton effect, and the resulting electrons produce an electric current that is known as the Compton current. The gamma rays transfer about half of their energy to the electrons, so these initial electrons have an energy of about 1 MeV. This causes the electrons to begin to travel in a generally downward direction at about 94 percent of the speed of light. Relativistic effects cause the mass of these high energy electrons to increase to about 3 times their normal rest mass.[18]
If there were no geomagnetic field and no additional atoms in the lower atmosphere for additional collisions, the electrons would continue to travel downward with an average current density in the stratosphere of about 48 amperes per square metre.[18]
Because of the downward tilt of the Earth’s magnetic field at high latitudes, the area of peak field strength is a U-shaped region to the equatorial side of the nuclear detonation. As shown in the diagram at the right, for nuclear detonations over the continental United States, this U-shaped region is south of the detonation point. Near the equator, where the Earth’s magnetic field is more nearly horizontal, the E1 field strength is more nearly symmetrical around the burst location.
The Earth’s magnetic field quickly deflects the electrons at right angles to the geomagnetic field, and the extent of the deflection depends upon the strength of the magnetic field. At geomagnetic field strengths typical of the central United States, central Europe or Australia, these initial electrons spiral around the magnetic field lines in a circle with a typical radius of about 85 metres (about 280 feet). These initial electrons are stopped by collisions with other air molecules at a average distance of about 170 metres (a little less than 580 feet). This means that most of the electrons are stopped by collisions with air molecules before they can complete one full circle of its spiral around the Earth’s magnetic field lines.[18]
This interaction of the very rapidly moving negatively charged electrons with the magnetic field radiates a pulse of electromagnetic energy. The pulse typically rises to its peak value in about 5 nanoseconds. The magnitude of this pulse typically decays to half of its peak value within 200 nanoseconds. (By the IEC definition, this E1 pulse is ended at one microsecond (1000 nanoseconds) after it begins.) This process occurs simultaneously with about 1025 other electrons.[18]
There are a number of secondary collisions which cause the subsequent electrons to lose energy before they reach ground level. The electrons generated by these subsequent collisions have such reduced energy that they do not contribute significantly to the E1 pulse.[18]
These 2 MeV gamma rays will normally produce an E1 pulse near ground level at moderately high latitudes that peaks at about 50,000 volts per metre. This is a peak power density of 6.6 megawatts per square metre.
The process of the gamma rays knocking electrons out of the atoms in the mid-stratosphere causes this region of the atmosphere to become an electrical conductor due to ionization, a process which blocks the production of further electromagnetic signals and causes the field strength to saturate at about 50,000 volts per metre. The strength of the E1 pulse depends upon the number and intensity of the gamma rays produced by the weapon and upon the rapidity of the gamma ray burst from the weapon. The strength of the E1 pulse is also somewhat dependent upon the altitude of the detonation.
There are reports of “super-EMP” nuclear weapons that are able to overcome the 50,000 volt per metre limit by the very nearly instantaneous release of a burst of gamma radiation of much higher energy levels than are known to be produced by second generation nuclear weapons. The reality and possible construction details of these weapons are classified, and therefore cannot be confirmed by scientists in the open scientific literature.[19]
[edit] E2
The E2 component is generated by scattered gamma rays and inelastic gammas produced by weapon neutrons. This E2 component is an “intermediate time” pulse that, by the IEC definition, lasts from about 1 microsecond to 1 second after the beginning of the electromagnetic pulse. The E2 component of the pulse has many similarities to the electromagnetic pulses produced by lightning, although the electromagnetic pulse induced by a nearby lightning strike may be considerably larger than the E2 component of a nuclear EMP. Because of the similarities to lightning-caused pulses and the widespread use of lightning protection technology, the E2 pulse is generally considered to be the easiest to protect against.
According to the United States EMP Commission, the main potential problem with the E2 component is the fact that it immediately follows the E1 component, which may have damaged the devices that would normally protect against E2.
According to the EMP Commission Executive Report of 2004, “In general, it would not be an issue for critical infrastructure systems since they have existing protective measures for defense against occasional lightning strikes. The most significant risk is synergistic, because the E2 component follows a small fraction of a second after the first component’s insult, which has the ability to impair or destroy many protective and control features. The energy associated with the second component thus may be allowed to pass into and damage systems.”[20]
[edit] E3
The E3 component is very different from the other two major components of nuclear EMP. The E3 component of the pulse is a very slow pulse, lasting tens to hundreds of seconds, that is caused by the nuclear detonation heaving the Earth’s magnetic field out of the way, followed by the restoration of the magnetic field to its natural place. The E3 component has similarities to a geomagnetic storm caused by a very severe solar flare.[21][22] Like a geomagnetic storm, E3 can produce geomagnetically induced currents in long electrical conductors, which can then damage components such as power line transformers.[23]
Because of the similarity between solar-induced geomagnetic storms and nuclear E3, it has become common to refer to solar-induced geomagnetic storms as “solar EMP.”[24] At ground level, however, “solar EMP” is not known to produce an E1 or E2 component.
For a more thorough description of E3 damage mechanisms, see the main article: Geomagnetically induced current
[edit] Practical considerations for nuclear EMP
Older, vacuum tube (valve) based equipment is generally much less vulnerable to EMP than newer solid state equipment. Soviet Cold War–era military aircraft often had avionics based on vacuum tubes due both to limitations in Soviet solid-state capabilities and a belief that the vacuum-tube gear would survive better.[1]
Although vacuum tubes are far more resistant to EMP than solid state devices, other components in vacuum tube circuitry can be damaged by EMP. Vacuum tube equipment actually was damaged in 1962 nuclear EMP testing.[14] Also, the solid state PRC-77 VHF manpackable 2-way radio survived extensive EMP testing.[25] The earlier PRC-25, nearly identical except for a vacuum tube final amplification stage, had been tested in EMP simulators but was not certified to remain fully functional.
Many nuclear detonations have taken place using bombs dropped by aircraft. The B-29 aircraft that delivered the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not lose power due to damage to their electrical or electronic systems. This is simply because electrons (ejected from the air by gamma rays) are stopped quickly in normal air for bursts below roughly 10 km (about 6 miles), so they do not get a chance to be significantly deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field (the deflection causes the powerful EMP seen in high altitude bursts), thus the limited use of smaller burst altitudes for widespread EMP.[26]
If the aircraft carrying the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs had been within the intense nuclear radiation zone when the bombs exploded over those cities, then they would have suffered effects from the charge separation (radial) EMP. But this only occurs within the severe blast radius for detonations below about 10 km altitude.
During nuclear tests in 1962, EMP disruptions were suffered aboard KC-135 photographic aircraft flying 300 km (190 mi) from the 410 kt (1,700 TJ) Bluegill Triple Prime and 410 kt (1,700 TJ) Kingfish detonations (48 and 95 km (30 and 59 mi) burst altitude, respectively)[27] but the vital aircraft electronics were far less sophisticated than today and the aircraft were able to land safely.
[edit] Generation of nuclear EMP
Several major factors control the effectiveness of a nuclear EMP weapon. These are
The altitude of the weapon when detonated;
The yield and construction details of the weapon;
The distance from the weapon when detonated;
Geographical depth or intervening geographical features;
The local strength of the magnetic field of the Earth.
Beyond a certain altitude a nuclear weapon will not produce any EMP, as the gamma rays will have had sufficient distance to disperse. In deep space or on worlds with no magnetic field (the moon or Mars for example) there will be little or no EMP. This has implications for certain kinds of nuclear rocket engines, such as Project Orion.
>>It’s amazing how many people today don’t even know how to use a manual can opener.
My mom was a school nurse at an elementary school. She tells a funny story about a child who was sick in her office, and needed to sharpen her pencil. My mom pointed to the (manual) sharpener. A few moments later, the girl came and said “Your sharpener must not be plugged in, it doesn’t work.”
I have one word for those people: DENTISTRY.
Sorry dinodino, I didn’t mean to come across so bad. Please accept my apology.
But they should be grounded independently from the rest of the house. Most people forget to do that.
Wow.... You went all out on that one. I was just going to type in “do a search on ‘Starfish Prime’. ;-)
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