The report, “Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts
Workshop Report,” funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
in 2008 advises of the extent such a disaster can have. The United States has developed a
society that is technologically advanced however a potential for near total destruction of these
systems and the interrelated infrastructure has been built in. Beyond destruction of major
components of the Grid, most of the infrastructure of our modern society is driven by electricity.
Water and sewage treatment, food distribution systems from supermarkets and distribution
centers, utility station controls (gas, electrical, nuclear plants), delivery of fuel to the
transportation industry, financial markets and many others all rely on electricity. “It's just the
opposite of how we usually think of natural disasters," says John Kappenman, a power industry
analyst with the Metatech Corporation of Goleta, California, and an advisor to the NAS
committee that produced the report. "Usually the less developed regions of the world are most
vulnerable, not the highly sophisticated technological regions."
According to the NAS report, the power supply to some 130 million people can be lost in about
90 seconds. Key elements of the electricity dependent infrastructure are then lost. Water which
is pumped electrically is not available to many users immediately if they are supplied by pump
and fairly soon for those who have water gravity supplied but initially pumped from reservoirs,
wells or lakes. Electrically powered transportation vehicles stop and gas fueled vehicles cannot
be supplied with electrically pumped gas which would affect deliveries. Back-up generators will
supply relief until fuel supplies run out. Nuclear plants are shut down when major Grid problems
occur and their control systems dependent on electricity may have been damaged to the point
of not functioning. Coal plants typically have a 30 day supply and won’t be resupplied if the
transportation system is lost. Hospitals basically have provisions for 72 hours emergency
operation and beyond that life sustaining services are no longer possible. As refrigeration and
heating is lost food and medical supplies spoil leaving these necessities no longer usable.
Factories making food and medical products are shut down making resupply impossible. "In
the US alone there are a million people with diabetes," Kappenman says. "Shut down
production, distribution and storage and you put all those lives at risk in very short order."
It may take months or years to even begin to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure as melted
transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced. "From the surveys I've done, you might
have a few spare transformers around, but installing a new one takes a well-trained crew a week
or more," John Kappenman further advises. "A major electrical utility might have one suitably
trained crew, maybe two." The few spare transformers are used up rather quickly. The major
transformers in the Grid are unique so up to 12 months can be required to build the specialized
transformers for segments of the power supply system that has been affected.
Assistance to the widespread affected areas will not occur quickly and the function of
emergency equipment and services will likely be reduced. Paul Kintner, a plasma physicist at
Cornell University notes, "if a Carrington event happened now, it would be like hurricane Katrina,
but 10 times worse." Total impact for the Hurricane Katrina disaster has been reported in the
$80 billion to $125 billion range. The NAS Report advises that a severe geomagnetic storm
impact could be as high as $2 trillion and require take a four to ten year recovery period.
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