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Only shows how little trust could be put on fixed infrastructure these days. From now on it has to be built in ways much more resistant to sabotage or attacks.
by anovikov 2y ago
Only shows how little trust could be put on fixed infrastructure these days.
From now on it has to be built in ways much more resistant to sabotage or attacks. In some ways this is already done: for example, renewable energy facilities are too spread out to be vulnerable, it takes too many and too powerful munitions to wreck a solar or wind power plant vs coal-fired one of comparable output. But gas pipelines are an entirely different thing.
- voytec 2y ago> Only shows how little trust could be put on fixed infrastructure these days You either introduce redundancy to get rid of single points of failure, or you invest in more reliable means to fulfill given requirements, and keep former main "pipe" as backup.
- anovikov 2y agoDoesn't work with gas pipeline, especially not with undersea ones. They scale down terribly poorly, becoming incredibly expensive to build and operate per bcm/y if made thinner/"smaller" to have many of them for redundancy. Also too long, equally well attacked at any point, thus impossible to defend, and impossible to fix once attacked (saltwater getting inside -> pipes are wrecked after a few days, long before they can be sealed and drained).
- voytec 2y agoMy point is that you don't need gas specifically, but energy. Find ways to get energy without dependency on gas if the source is unstable.
- anovikov 2y agoThat's true. We should depend less on things that are so vulnerable. LNG is partially a solution though - a liquefaction or regasification terminal is easier to protect, and defence of shipping at sea is a well-debugged thing since WWI.
- CRConrad 2y ago> defence of shipping at sea is a well-debugged thing since WWI. When (presumably) the Royal Navy was in charge of it. Since WW2 it's been the US one that's handled it, but... Some pundits *cough*PeterZeihan*cough* have been saying for a while now that America is withdrawing from the role of World Police.
- nradov 2y agoYou need gas specifically if you want to have a chemicals industry that uses natural gas as a feedstock. https://cen.acs.org/business/Germanys-chemical-industry-survive-gas/101/i19 https://cen.acs.org/business/Germanys-chemical-industry-surv...
- konschubert 2y agoThe substations and power lines are pretty vulnerable.
- dtquad 2y agoElectricity infrastructure like substations and power lines already have a proven method of redundancy by building more of it than needed. Also Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure shows that substations and power lines can be rapidly rebuilt.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoA gunman killed power for tens of thousands by shooting electrical infrastructure. A coordinated attack at a lynchpin could do much worse. A gunfire attack on two electrical substations in rural North Carolina has left tens of thousands of people without power, schools closed, a curfew imposed, and authorities investigating what they say was an intentional, criminal attack. As the outages continued into Monday, questions persisted about who carried out the attack and what could have been their motive in knocking out power to Moore County and its 100,000 residents. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/05/1140775417/north-carolina-substation-attack-what-we-know https://www.npr.org/2022/12/05/1140775417/north-carolina-sub...
- matthewdgreen 2y agoI’m enthusiastic about the wind plants were building off the East Coast, but I also worry that they have single points of failure where the power cables come in from the ocean. These could even be severed accidentally. I hope they’ve considered adding some redundancy to these links. There’s even a plan to build offshore power distribution networks up and down the whole East Coast which would potentially help (or hurt.)
- anovikov 2y agoThroughput of those cables isn't so huge. It takes an attack of enormous scale which will be impossible to hide or misattribute to cause significant power shortage over a wide area this way.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoWell, these wind projects can be close to 1GW and they come onshore at one place. So that seems like it could be very disruptive. What am I missing?