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Power Hardware Technology

EMP-Shielded Power Grids Under Development 111

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from MarketWatch: "A one-megaton nuclear bomb detonated 250 miles over Kansas could cripple many modern electronic devices and systems in the continental US and take out the power grid for a long time. ... A solar storm similar to the one that occurred in 1859, which shorted out telegraph wires in the United States and Europe, could wreak havoc on electrical systems. Each of the above scenarios can create a powerful electromagnetic pulse that overloads electronic devices and systems. IAN staff and Frostburg State University physics and engineering professor Hilkat Soysal are teaming — through a $165,000 project recently approved by the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program — to create renewable energy-powered, electromagnetic pulse (EMP)-protected microgrids that could provide electricity for critical infrastructure facilities in the event of a disaster." Also available are an EMP threat assessment (PDF) written for the US Congress and an estimate of economic impact (PDF).
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EMP-Shielded Power Grids Under Development

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  • Exactly (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:39AM (#25338579) Homepage
    Why settle for tin foil hats when you can have tin foil powerplants, houses, cars, etc. It just makes sense.
  • Omega Man (Score:5, Funny)

    by p51d007 ( 656414 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:46AM (#25338605)
    Sometimes I wish we could throw away technology, and go back to the old days...less stress. Just as long as they don't take my cell phone, wi-fi, internet, DVD's LOL.
  • by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:50AM (#25338619) Homepage Journal

    ... be supporting the governments and their military for which an EMP would most likely come from.

    Just more terrorism from those we pay taxes to.

  • Shielded grid? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:53AM (#25338625) Homepage

    If the grid was shielded, could it be used for broadband Internet?

    Transporter_ii

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Even unshielded, it can be. It's just expensive to protect your modem from 10kV and up, and the bandwidth of long aluminium cables isn't very impressive.

      • Even unshielded, it can be.

        Yes, it can be...but because it is unshielded, it creates RF Interference with radios (mostly HAM bands). It is my understanding that if they weren't causing interference, Broadband Over Power lines would be just about ready to roll.

        Don't think a lot of money is being put into this?

        -=-=-=-=

        http://broadbandoverpowerlines.blogspot.com/2006/05/google-gs-sensustxu-ge-earthlink-put.html [blogspot.com]

        Google, GS, SENSUS,TXU, GE, EarthLink put $230M in Current Communications ~ 10 Mbps Symmetrical speed

        • by amorsen ( 7485 )

          Yes, it can be...but because it is unshielded, it creates RF Interference with radios (mostly HAM bands). It is my understanding that if they weren't causing interference, Broadband Over Power lines would be just about ready to roll.

          They aren't going to shield the last mile to you. Sorry. Anyway, if they have to dig up the last mile they might as well put in fiber at the same time.

          Broadband over power lines is obsolete before it got started.

    • by 4D6963 ( 933028 )
      Probably would help considered there would probably be less noise on the line. That would be great if it could be used to replace entirely the land telephone network.
  • underground (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ionix5891 ( 1228718 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:54AM (#25338641)

    will burying the cables under ground help? sorry if its a dumb question

    • The losses incurred because of inductive / capacitive losses burying the power lines under ground would be tremendous. It is not a viable option in the near future. Now maybe if they can do cheap superconducting underground lines we may have a chance.
      • by mpe ( 36238 )
        The losses incurred because of inductive / capacitive losses burying the power lines under ground would be tremendous. It is not a viable option in the near future. Now maybe if they can do cheap superconducting underground lines we may have a chance.

        It also costs a lot more to install underground cables. Even if you had superconducting cable it comes down to the difference between digging a trench vs posts or concrete foundations every so often.
      • No extra losses if you bury high voltage DC power-lines. Since we got the tech to do DC now, and it should work better for solar anyway. ( the alternating current causes a ringing current between any capacitance and inductance, DC only during load changes would you have to pay the cost of inductance, not constantly like AC.

    • Re:underground (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11, 2008 @09:34AM (#25338799)

      Not unless they are very very deep. Cables are usually more conductive than the ground. The EMP will continue deep into the ground, and will be picked up by cables like a several miles long antenna.

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        So put the cables in non-conductive conduit and suspend them in the middle of the tube, so that (other than mounting apparatus) they are not in contact with anything but air.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Tanktalus ( 794810 )
          You kind of have it backwards. You want to put the cables in a conductive conduit [wikipedia.org]. The air layer would be non-conductive already, though there are simpler ways to achieve that (e.g., rubber or plastic).
          • by mysidia ( 191772 )

            The materials making up the walls of the conduit itself should be conductive, but the interior of the conduit should be non-conductive.

            Actually, air is a fairly good insulator, but at high voltages, it can still become conductive.

            So it may be best to fill the conduit with a less-conductive inert gas, pressurize and isolate segments of the conduit, to discourage things like water dripping in, if the conduit is ever breached somewhere, or to make incursion less likely and minimize the length of conduit

            • by PPH ( 736903 )

              Conductive conduit (i.e. steel) is expensive! So what you do is to make cables surrounded with a conductive, grounded shield ...

              ...which is exactly how medium and high voltage underground cabled produced today are constructed.

              • by mysidia ( 191772 )

                Conductive conduit (i.e. steel) is expensive! So what you do is to make cables surrounded with a conductive, grounded shield ...

                Well, conduit in general is not cheap. You can line your PVC conduit with a foil shield covering the wall and it becomes conductive.

                The added expense of rigid conduit has benefits like being able to bring additional cables through it, for example fiber, which could be leased out at a profit to other users.

                Moreover, you have additional protection against the wire being broken

  • Pork (Score:4, Funny)

    by bsane ( 148894 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:57AM (#25338653)

    through a $165,000 project recently approved by the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program

    Sounds like pork to me... I hope McCaine shuts this down!

    • Sounds like pork to me... I hope McCaine shuts this down!

      There's pork and then there's National Security Pork.
      All the Candidates are proposing to attack the first.
      I'm not sure any of them have even discussed cutting the flow of money for the 2nd.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:59AM (#25338657)

    Soon nobody will want to waste an expensive bomb on your broke asses anyway.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      There's nothing quite like doing research in the hopes of spending billions to defend oneself against the absurdly unlikely. A nuke detonated in LOE?!? A natural phenomenon the likes of which has been recorded exactly ONCE in the last 150 years?!

      If only there was some kind of Adamsian Perspective Ray [wikipedia.org] we could shoot these people with.
      • by mpe ( 36238 )
        There's nothing quite like doing research in the hopes of spending billions to defend oneself against the absurdly unlikely. A nuke detonated in LOE?!? A natural phenomenon the likes of which has been recorded exactly ONCE in the last 150 years?!

        Especially when there are far more sensible things to research as well as a power grid which could do with some major maintainence.
      • by Ihmhi ( 1206036 )

        But as TFS said, a solar flare (like the one in 1859) could do the same thing.

        You can't be use diplomacy against nature.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      So you REALLY didn't mean "assets".

    • by gatkinso ( 15975 )

      Well, we have plenty to waste on you.

  • Anyone else having problems? Content from genweb.ostg.org (or .com?) takes forever, holding up page loading.

  • boom! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So if someone wants to screw up the US, and they have one atomic bomb to do so, doesn't defending against an EMP attack just make it more likely they'll go the traditional route and nuke a big city.

  • IAN? (Score:4, Funny)

    by definate ( 876684 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @09:28AM (#25338785)

    Am I the only one who read "IAN staff" as "I Am Not staff" and then thought I am not staff? That doesn't make sense. Fucking slashdot summary!

    Ohhhhh... wait a minute... I.A.N... fucking slashdot abbreviations!

  • by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @09:50AM (#25338881)

    solar flares need to be shielded from as well.

    • "EMP" includes solar flares.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Solar flares cause problems because they induce an extermely low frequency charge on a transmission line. This low frequency is practically a DC voltage which can saturate the core of transformer thus causing a blackout. Coupling the line through a large capacitor bank filters out this DC component thus negating much of the effects of a solar flare.

  • Nice (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @09:58AM (#25338945)

    that could provide electricity for critical infrastructure facilities in the event of a disaster."

    "Critical infrastructure" had better include the Wal-marts, fire, police, gas stations...

    And most importantly: the internet.

    The potential effects of a massive EMP or power outage are so bad, that the traditional notion of "critical infrastructure" may not be enough.

    I.E. If businesses are down (no power) for months, then you have a situation where people can't purchase essential supplies, AND since a large EMP would effect a large area, noone nearby can spare them.

    • I hate to rain too much on your parade but, if my sleep deprived memory serves me correctly, an EMP would render permanently inoperable any device within the effect area controlled by a semiconductor. This obviously includes computers and routing equipment, but also most cash registers, motor vehicles, kitchen appliances, traffic lights, programmable controllers, etc. Not to mention the approximately 5,000 airliners in the air during peak times.

      In addition, communication equipment and other types of receive

  • create renewable energy-powered, electromagnetic pulse (EMP)-protected microgrids that could provide electricity for critical infrastructure facilities in the event of a disaster

    Ummm. Might they be referring to shielded backup generators? Can I have a $160,000 grant now too?

  • a $165,000 project recently approved by the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program -- to create renewable energy-powered, electromagnetic pulse (EMP)-protected microgrids

    No part of the objective seems to require the solution to be renewable energy-powered. It wouldn't be unconscionable to power the thing by burning caribou in order to preserve the nation's power grid, and communications...

    But somebody had money earmarked to "renewable energy" and somebody else knew, how to craft a proposal.

    Your

    • by khallow ( 566160 )
      A couple of things. First, caribou would be a renewable energy source. Second, there is some reason to the excuse. A number of renewable energy sources don't require any sort of fuel distribution network. A solar panel just needs sunlight (even cloudy skys would generate some power) and a windfarm needs wind.
      • by mi ( 197448 )

        First, caribou would be a renewable energy source.

        That's cool. I'll use that to defend a new Alaska drilling project as "using renewable energy".

        But allow me to rephrase my point, lest it may be lost in the debate on whether caribou are renewable (and at what rate). How about: It wouldn't be unconscionable to power the thing by waterboarding caribou in order to preserve the nation's power grid and communications?..

        A number of renewable energy sources don't require any sort of fuel distribution network.

        Wel

        • by mpe ( 36238 )
          The energy source needs to be compact and well-protected. Whether it is renewable is (or ought to be) irrelevant -- the system is not supposed to work forever -- only for a short time after the disaster.

          I have some ideas, but Rudolf Diesel appears to have had them first :)
        • by khallow ( 566160 )

          That's cool. I'll use that to defend a new Alaska drilling project as "using renewable energy".

          Please do. And post the video. I think there's a lot of different between a source that is renewable on the order of a generation of caribou (geothermal is something like this as well) and renewable on the order of millions of years.

          Well, if the result of their work ends up using a renewable energy source for this reason, that's fine with me. What I object to is their ruling out all other energy sources a priori.

          That's reasonable. It does sound a bit feelgoody. I'm just pointing out that there are practical reasons for considering "renewable" energy sources.

          Neither is likely to survive a nuclear bomb, however... The energy source needs to be compact and well-protected. Whether it is renewable is (or ought to be) irrelevant -- the system is not supposed to work forever -- only for a short time after the disaster.

          I don't get what you think is going on here. We're not speaking of a surface nuclear blast. Yes, solar cells due to their large siz

      • by mpe ( 36238 )
        A number of renewable energy sources don't require any sort of fuel distribution network. A solar panel just needs sunlight (even cloudy skys would generate some power) and a windfarm needs wind.

        You are still likely to need a power grid, because the best place for generating power may not be where you want to use that power.
  • Yes, protecting electronics from solar storms and nuclear explosions is impressive and all, but what I really need is something to stop the brrp-brrp-brrp-brrp from my BlackBerry.
  • We're all panicking because some streetlights went out in Hawaii after one test. (Oh look it up!)

    I agree, EMP=bad, & solar flares could do darn near the same thing.

    BUT let's try to remember: a megaton class weapon exploded at the edge of the atmosphere is the work of a grown-up nu-ku-ler power. The Axis of Eagerness is not likely to generate this threat anytime soon. By that time, we'll have other solutions and problems.

    Let's just try NOT to piss off France, 'k?

  • Nice, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by orkybash ( 1013349 )
    ... I don't think MIPS means Maryland Industrial Partnerships to the slashdot crowd.
  • ...I welcome our overload overlords.
  • That money spent "upgrading" the electrical grid needs to be spent right now on better failovers in conventional incidents. More redundancy and distribution around bottlenecks, more intelligence and messaging. We just watched the 2003 Northeast Blackout [wikipedia.org], and others are all too common [wikipedia.org]. If the grid upgrades are to be focused on individual cities, like with this EMP shielding project, they should first protect cities from blackouts that happen inside them [wikipedia.org] during heat waves.

    If there's money for EMP shielding, t

  • by jefftp ( 35835 ) on Saturday October 11, 2008 @01:19PM (#25340343)

    Hurricane Ike knocked out power across Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. We need to divert this money away from worrying about preventing a power grid outage due to an extremely unlikely nuclear strike and towards finding ways to keep natural, regularly occuring forces from bringing down power for 6 million people across the center of the US.

    • IKE was preventable (Score:3, Interesting)

      by woolio ( 927141 )

      Hurricane Ike knocked out power across Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. We need to divert this money away from worrying about preventing a power grid outage due to an extremely unlikely nuclear strike and towards finding ways to keep natural, regularly occuring forces from bringing down power for 6 million people across the center of the US

      The outages caused by Hurricane Ike WERE PREVENTABLE!

      In Houston, there are trees completely growing around power poles. The news doesn

    • by khallow ( 566160 )
      I disagree. Recovery after hurricanes is very quick. A nuclear strike on the other hand is only "unlikely" till it happens. The more vulnerable the US is to that, the worse it'll be for US citizens when it happens. And given the far greater damage possible than with a hurricane, I don't see the preparation for a nuclear strike that unreasonable.
    • by Ma8thew ( 861741 )
      Have you tried burying the cables?
  • (...) renewable energy-powered, electromagnetic pulse (EMP)-protected microgrids that could provide electricity for critical infrastructure facilities (...)

    Critical infrastructure facilities powered by renewable energy? So you'll be protected from extremely rare solar storms and high-altitude nuclear explosions but not from weather? That doesn't sound very clever to me, unless we're talking about hydro power. It seems that they thrown in "renewable energy powered" to be buzzword compliant. On top of that, if the goal is reliability, it's generally better not to go with bleeding edge technology.

  • by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Saturday October 11, 2008 @03:48PM (#25341245) Homepage Journal

    There are many other ways to form EMPs. The problem is making them powerful enough. A shorted out magnetotron in a microwave generates enough EM to screw up any nearby electronics (blew out my microwave, killed my computer, TV, router, and stereo. Everything else in other rooms were fine, just the kitchen and living room were affected, and they're on separate circuits.)

  • Most new cabling, even high voltage up to a point is underground, ie no EMP. The EMP pulses are so short anyway (like ns) that they aren't likely to propagate very far on overhead wires either, as the energy is just radiated back out into space or turned into heat down the line a bit.

    I would worry more about unshielded smaller scale electronics like server farms, consumer electronics, wireless communications of all types including public service. Anything that has an antenna that receives in the ns range

  • EMP threat is way exaggerated
    http://www.alternet.org/story/25738/ [alternet.org]

    A 1.4 megaton thermonuclear weapon detonated 250 miles above Johnston Island in the Pacific affected street lamps, circuit breakers, cars and radio stations in Hawaiian, 800 miles to the north. Starfish Prime was a thermonuclear device with a yield over a hundred times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Minimal damage 800 miles away. 1% of street lights and some fused ignitions in cars.
    • by gb506 ( 738638 )
      The area affected by a 250mi high 1+ MT EMP burst isn't necessarily circular or evenly represented on a map, certain points on the compass are affected more due to the curvature of the earths magnetic field. The reason why Hawaii did not experience significant issues is probably due to the fact that Johnston Atoll is South and West of Hawaii. If Johnston were North of Hawaii things would probably have been much different. My feeling is that we should find a way to harden our core electrical infrastructure
      • The thing about EMPs is that you need to answer this question. Would a terrorist use a thermal nuclear bomb to murder 20 million people in New York City, or would they use it to blow out 10,000 street lamps and maybe 10,000 car ignitions? If a terrorist was that stupid, I'd say PLEASE EMP US.
        • by gb506 ( 738638 )
          If a terrorist org had a 1MT nuke, they'd probably have a better chance of killing 20m people using the emp option. Positioned properly, say, over Pittsburgh, the emp would certainly take out nearly everything electronic from Indiana to the Atlantic that isn't hardened. A lot of the big power grid hardware is made overseas and/or requires a long manufacturing lead time. If they attacked in November, you'd have a lot more than 20m either freezing or starving to death (or both) within a month or two. A 1MT nu
          • "If a terrorist org had a 1MT nuke, they'd probably have a better chance of killing 20m people using the emp option"

            Please, please, PLEASE let the terrorists be this stupid. PLEASE waste that nuke on an EMP, please. I guess you've never heard of a low tech option called a blanket. Some of us growing up were too poor to use the heater.
    • The Starfish Prime test was conducted in 1962, back before "street lamps, circuit breakers, cars and radio stations" were all packed full of semiconductor devices.

      Older electromechanical or vacuum tube based systems were far more robust against EMP than modern VLSI electronics would be.

      • Given the choice between losing a few cars and lamps over 20 million people in New York or some other major city, I say take the cars and electronics. I really hope terrorists or any other enemy are that stupid to use a thermal nuclear device as an EMP bomb.
        • I would tend to agree, but a worst-case EMP event over the US wouldn't exactly be a victimless event. We have become so dependent on technology that in many cases it is literally a matter of life and death. Hospital life support systems, control/cooling systems at nuke plants or chemical plants, aircraft in the air at the time of the blast, emergency communications and response vehicles, etc.

          Such an event would cause a substantial loss of life almost immediately, with residual losses ongoing for quite a whi

          • EMP by no means would be victimless. The difference in casualties however is probably 1000-fold higher if that 1.4 megaton explosive went off at the optimum height above a major city. This is why I hope terrorists are so stupid that they would "waste" their nuclear devices like this. It's not that I hope any attack will happen, but I'm not going to put them on the same scale like so many silly geeks that value their computers before human lives. You read the other guy that replied to me who said that he
  • We simply do not have the technology to guarantee protecting power distribution grids against EMP attack. The very best we can do is to encourage solar power generation for each home, and demand higher standards of impulse protection in all consumer equipment. One large EMP today would take us back to the horse and buggy era.

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