It's good for 4/0 cable.
Posted on 08/01/2015 11:09:02 AM PDT by TXnMA
Texas State Senator Bob Hall, a former USAF Colonel and himself an EMP expert, characterizes as "equivalent to treason" the behavior of the electric utilities and their lobbyists:
"As a Texas State Senator who tried in the 2015 legislative session to get a bill passed to harden the Texas grid against an EMP attack or nature's GMD, I learned first hand the strong control the electric power company lobby has on elected officials. We did manage to get a weak bill passed in the Senate but the power companies had it killed in the House. A very deceitful document which was carefully designed to mislead legislators was provided by the power company lobbyist to legislators at a critical moment in the process. The document was not just misleading, it actually contained false statements. The EMP/GMD threat is real and it is not "if" but WHEN it will happen. The responsibility for the catastrophic destruction and wide spread death of Americans which will occur will be on the hands of the executives of the power companies because they know what needs to be done and are refusing to do it. In my opinion power company executives, by refusing to work with the legislature to protect the electrical grid infrastructure are committing an egregious act that is equivalent to treason. I know and understand what I am saying."
"As a young US Air Force Captain, with a degree in electrical engineering from The Citadel, I was the project officer who lead [sic] the Air Force/contractor team which designed, developed and installed the modification to "harden" the Minuteman Strategic missile to protect it from an EMP attack. The American people must demand that the power company executives that are hiding the truth stop deceiving the people and immediately begin protecting our electrical grid so that life as we know it today will not end when the terrorist EMP attack comes. Ironically, while electric power lobbyists are fighting against EMP protection in Washington, Texas, Maine, Colorado and elsewhere, the Iranian news agency MEHR recently reported that Iran is violating international sanctions and going full bore to protect itself from a nuclear EMP attack:"
Iranian researchers...have built an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) filter that protects country's vital organizations against cyber attack. Director of Kosar Information and Communication Technology Institute Saeid Rahimi told MNA correspondent that the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) filter is one of the country's boycotted products and until now procuring it required considerable costs and various strategies. "But recently Kosar ICT...has managed to domestically manufacture the EMP filter for the very first time in this country," said Rahimi. Noting that the domestic EMP filter has been approved by security authorities, Rahimi added "the EMP filter protects sensitive devices and organizations against electromagnetic pulse and electromagnetic terrorism." He also said the domestic EMP filter has been implemented in a number of vital centers in Iran. (MEHR News Agency, "Iran Builds EMP Filter For 1st Time" June 13, 2015)
Read more: Family Security Matters
Under Creative Commons License
No, you lack the understanding to check yourself, unfortunately, which is why I mentioned the APA study.
What is it, exactly that you think you are right about? I’ll do my best to educate you. It’s a complex topic, and you’re already sure you understand it, but are almost completely misguided.
It takes more than Wikipedia to take on this topic. I know this to be true, too.
“So if these capacitors were at the intersection of power lines and state boarders, they would do a good job of mitigating the long haul transmission of the EMP pulse?”
From a grid perspective, state borders would be somewhat arbitrary.
Capacitors stop a Geomagnetic Storm induced DC current on transmission lines, or Nuclear EMP “E3” effect. It does nothing to mitigate an EMP “E1” or “RF” pulse. mitigating that takes a lot more effort and cost, unfortunately.
“Would you be willing to venture a guess as to how much they cost?”
$10M
For now the (supposedly unclassified) info on Wikipedia will have to suffice:
On July 9, 1962, at 09:00:09 Coordinated Universal Time, (July 8, Honolulu time, at nine seconds after 11 p.m.), the Starfish Prime test was successfully detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometres (250 mi). The coordinates of the detonation were 16°28′N 169°38′WCoordinates: 16°28′N 169°38′W.[5] The actual weapon yield came very close to the design yield, which various sources have set at different values in the range of 1.4 to 1.45 megatons (6.0 PJ). The nuclear warhead detonated 13 minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff of the Thor missile from Johnston Island.[6]Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.[5]
Infrastructure damage at 900-mile (1800 mile diameter) range; with little things like inverse square falloff in play, you thing things might have been a wee bit worse near ground zero? :
...and that was in 1962 -- over half a decade ago...
“The nuclear explosion does not kill people directly but imagine the electric power being out across the US indefinitely with no hope of it coming back on.”
This reminds me of a Thomas Edison biography I read a while ago.
To honor him on his death, cities would turn off their commercial power grids, which is one of the many things he invented. They immediately recognized how unfeasable this would be because of how crucial the electric grid is to the survival of their cities, so they decided to honor Edison in some other away.
The electric grid is like a second form of blood for us humans.
It was a solar storm of a strength similar to the Carrington Event. But that really just shows that actually another CE probably really isn’t inevitable. Storms that big don’t actually happen very often, they don’t cover the entire surface of the sun, and they can miss. It’s entirely plausible, given the size of earth within the sphere of place CEs can go, that there will not be another CE that hits earth in between now and when the sun goes out.
You do realize that the sum total of EMP damage from Starfish was somewhere between 1 and 3% of the traffic lights stopped working? It really is not that big a deal. There’s a thunderstorm coming through Tucson right now that’s got a good chance of knocking out more than 3% of the traffic lights.
I understand that people who have facts bring them, and people who refuse to brings don’t have them. And this is 5 or 6 posts in a row from you with no facts. Don’t bother to post anymore, I’m done reading your factless attacks, you simply are not that interesting.
Here you go buddy:
the 1921 Solar storm is termed a 100 year event, it was 50% of the strength of the Carrington event.
That is what grid operators are using. THey think it’s fairly likely to occur - enough so to actually do something about it.
“You can bring an idiot to knowledge, but you can’t make him think”
Starfish caused minor problems, hardly the “destroys all things electronic and electrical” paranoia the Internet claims.
You really don't use your head for much, do you?
That thunderstorm is in Tucson.
Starfish Prime was ~900 miles distant from Hawaii .
Even at that distance, it interacted directly with the infrastructure in Hawaii. (There is no "grid antenna" across the Pacific for it to interact with -- and couple through to Hawaii.)
Non sequitur much?
“The electric grid is like a second form of blood for us humans”
Gee, it didn’t exist when my great-grandparents crossed the ocean to America, and they did OK.
The EMP pulse from Starfish occurred in 1962, when electronics used vacuum tubes and transistors.
Nowadays integrated circuits are the rule. They’re more sensitive to voltage overload, so the risk of damage is increased.
Kill the brain and you kill the system.
Not much downside there.
Cordially,
Oh look another one with nothing to post but insults. You guys really need to learn that when you’ve been reduced to insults you have admitted you’re wrong.
The important part to understand about Starfish is that it really didn’t do much. Yes at 900 miles away some lights turned off. But it was TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY miles in the air to get that far. That’s ISS altitude. Nobody but us and maybe Russia is putting a bomb that high. And Russia probably won’t bother because frankly there are easier ways to turn off 3% of the stoplights. Really anybody that can put a nuke into LEO has so many better options for wreaking havoc than EMP, it’s just not worth the effort.
“They’re more sensitive to voltage overload, so the risk of damage is increased.”
But they are also not connected to many wires much less any of any real length to develop a voltage from an EMP.
>> Kill the brain and you kill the system <<
Agreed. And it looks to me as if somebody has already killed the brains of a few posters on this thread!
It's good for 4/0 cable.
+1,000,000
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.