The USA Today features a remarkably balanced discussion about the "EMP threat" to the United States (with the exception of its very sensationalistic title). Seems as if there's a bill going to the Senate, so we get to rehash the very familiar debate between the Cult of EMP Crazy and the rest of the scientific community.
Fear is evident. With the sun's 11-year solar cycle ramping up for its stormy maximum in 2012, and nuclear concerns swirling about Iran and North Korea, a drumbeat of reports and blue-ribbon panels center on electromagnetic pulse scenarios.
"We're taking this seriously," says Ed Legge of the Edison Electric Institute in Washington, which represents utilities. He points to a North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) report in June, conducted with the Energy Department, that found pulse threats to the grid "may be much greater than anticipated."
There are "some important reasons for concern," says physicist Yousaf Butt of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But there is also a lot of fluff."
What's missing, of course, is any resemblance to journalistic investigation as to which side is misleading the American public and what their true motives are. Here's a hint: solar storms actually exist in nature, while conservatives remain upset that there aren't missile defense sites in every state in the Union. And if power companies are concerned about EMP effects on the grid, maybe they ought to invest their own money into developing safeguards against the possibility of that occurring.
Power companies invest shareholder money on a project to protect shareholder returns in the low probability of an EMP related loss? Yeah, that's sure get a rate increase out of every public service commission in the US.
Posted by: Fred | 28 October 2010 at 09:54 PM