During the sabre rattling of the Cuban missile crisis, both the US and USSR engaged in high altitude nuclear testing. A Soviet 300kt 'shot' was exploded at 290km near Dzhezkazgan. The EMP fused 570 km of overhead telephone line, started a fire that burned down a power plant, and shut down 1,000-km of shallow-buried power cables. High altitude nuclear explosions also damage and destroy satellites as they travel through belts of radiation cause by the explosions.
Of course scientists have been able to study the results of these explosions and are likely able to 'fine tune' the explosions to have the desired effect. Maybe nuclear EMP weapons are overrated, but I am not keen to find out through personal experience, especially in a Canadian winter!
Minor damage. 3.8 Megaton is also a very large bomb, and North Korea has nothing in that league.
Given that so much of our grid and electronics run on micro circuitry, these things would appear to be less robust in regards to EMPs, than 1962 Hawaii.
I do not believe that is true. Semiconductor circuits cannot take high voltage anyways, and so they are not directly connected to the grid. When their control systems are connected to the grid, they are expected to deal with surges, and it is quite likely they can take massive surges on the transmission lines without causing serious damage. Links will pop and overloads will engage.
The EMP fused 570 km of overhead telephone line, started a fire that burned down a power plant, and shut down 1,000-km of shallow-buried power cables.
The Soviets were always behind us in electrical engineering technology. I'm not surprised that they are less equipped to deal with surges than are we. They probably still are.
High altitude nuclear explosions also damage and destroy satellites as they travel through belts of radiation cause by the explosions.
Satellites of 1962. Satellites of today are much more hardened against radiation and EMP. It might still damage some of them, but not nearly so much as it would have back in 1962 when Satellite technology was in it's infancy.
Of course scientists have been able to study the results of these explosions and are likely able to 'fine tune' the explosions to have the desired effect.
I've been studying atomic bomb theory for decades, and I don't know how you would "fine tune" a bomb to make more energy as an EMP wave. It's pretty much a function of the bomb's yield. More powerful bombs make more powerful EM waves.
Maybe nuclear EMP weapons are overrated, but I am not keen to find out through personal experience, especially in a Canadian winter!
I think the claims are overrated, but I also think they are not nonsense. There is a real threat from A-bomb induced EMP, but I don't think it would disable us for months, more like days or weeks.
Our stuff is designed to handle direct lightning strikes, and if it can shunt lightning strikes to ground, I don't see how an EMP would likely be more powerful than that.
Overvoltages induced on the lines will pop links, and the surge arrestors will bypass most of the energy into the ground. Once a plasma path is created, the induced voltage will continuously sustain it until the source of power is dissipated. If the power is so strong that it will melt the lines, (something I greatly doubt) then when the lines burn in two, the surge will no longer be reaching the substations or generators.