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Sobering stuff indeed. What do we know about these events as far as mitigation goes? How long would power be disrupted or devices be out of commission if a simi

Sobering stuff indeed. What do we know about these events as far as mitigation goes? How long would power be disrupted or devices be out of commission if a similarly strong geomagnetic storm hit? Are we talking "lights out" for 3 days or 3 months? It's hard to glean from the article how literally one should take the sentence, "If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces."

caeril 6y ago
From what I understand, there is widespread agreement on a grid-wide disconnect policy. The idea is: when a CME of sufficient scale is detected, all switchyards and substations go open a bit before impact (CME ions travel sub-c, so we have between 6 and 10 hours notice). There is a 2-3 hour worldwide blackout, after which we close circuits again. There are several unsolved problems, such as, how do we dump surplus generation, particularly from nuclear reactors (you can SCRAM a reactor instantly, but you're not bringing it back up anytime soon), while retaining the ability to spin back up quickly? In what order do we disconnect and reconnect? Etc As for satellites, I'm not sure. You need long antennas to induce the currents needed to destroy things, which is why the grid is far more vulnerable than, say, cars (contrary to the "cars don't run" narrative of prepper fiction) Maybe they get through just fine, maybe we lose and have to relaunch a lot of orbital assets? Not sure on this one.
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graderjs 6y ago
Big transformers can take years to replace. And if most of the world is knocked out at once, it seems unlikely we'd be able to replace them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24319585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24319585 After the attack on the Metcalf station in SV, a report was released about grid vulnerability to attacks. A solar storm would be able to do even more damage than targeted attacks on a few transformers. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2012/11/electric-power-grid-inherently-vulnerable-to-terrorist-attacks-report-delayed-in-classification-review-will-be-updated https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2012/11/electric-powe... Maybe we can have a starlink type grid of satellites to soak up some of this load, i have no idea. Hopefully the advance warning (not possible for flares tho) protocol mentioned in the sibling comment will reduce alot of damage but i have no idea how effective that is for big storms.

caeril 6y ago

From what I understand, there is widespread agreement on a grid-wide disconnect policy. The idea is: when a CME of sufficient scale is detected, all switchyards and substations go open a bit before impact (CME ions travel sub-c, so we have between 6 and 10 hours notice). There is a 2-3 hour worldwide blackout, after which we close circuits again. There are several unsolved problems, such as, how do we dump surplus generation, particularly from nuclear reactors (you can SCRAM a reactor instantly, but you're not bringing it back up anytime soon), while retaining the ability to spin back up quickly? In what order do we disconnect and reconnect? Etc As for satellites, I'm not sure. You need long antennas to induce the currents needed to destroy things, which is why the grid is far more vulnerable than, say, cars (contrary to the "cars don't run" narrative of prepper fiction) Maybe they get through just fine, maybe we lose and have to relaunch a lot of orbital assets? Not sure on this one.

deleted 6y ago
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graderjs 6y ago

Big transformers can take years to replace. And if most of the world is knocked out at once, it seems unlikely we'd be able to replace them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24319585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24319585 After the attack on the Metcalf station in SV, a report was released about grid vulnerability to attacks. A solar storm would be able to do even more damage than targeted attacks on a few transformers. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2012/11/electric-power-grid-inherently-vulnerable-to-terrorist-attacks-report-delayed-in-classification-review-will-be-updated https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2012/11/electric-powe... Maybe we can have a starlink type grid of satellites to soak up some of this load, i have no idea. Hopefully the advance warning (not possible for flares tho) protocol mentioned in the sibling comment will reduce alot of damage but i have no idea how effective that is for big storms.