Enhancing National Preparedness to Space-Weather Events - White House Release????

a reply to: smurfy
CMEs do not produce effects like an EMP. They do not directly affect electronics.

CMEs can cause geomagnetic storms. Geomagnetic storms can induce very low frequency currents in long conductors (like power transmission lines). So low in frequency they are, essentially, DC currents. These currents can represent voltages of a few hundred volts over a long distance but that is not really the problem. The problem is that the power grid uses AC. AC and DC do not play well together when they meet each other in transformers.

Turning the system off in the event of a major event would prevent damage to the infrastructure.

Thought this might be helpful.


ETA:

A solar flare is a light-speed traveling burst of x-rays and energy, while a coronal mass ejection (CME) is a giant cloud of particles emitted from the Sun. Both can affect the Earth in different ways and sometimes they happen together.

www.space.com...

a reply to: DenyObfuscation

Yeah.
Here's my version
www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: jadedANDcynical
Not to mention that we'd have Fukushima level events happening everywhere there is a nuclear power plant.

If there is no power to run the cooling pumps, boom!

Anywhere near, or down wind, one of these places would not be where you wanted to stay:

Well, that's right, the rods need to be cooled for a long long time, even if a shutdown has been achieved. Containment pools for spent rods need to have pumped water as well, and after any battery type back up runs out, they would need fossil fuel to keep water pumping, and after that, they would need to do a lot of peeing and after that....

Nuclear power stations have had dodgy moments by accidental incidental use of computers anyway...guys with laptops in other words, although resulting in a controlled auto shutdown, that's not to say that hackers could get in the act in some novel way. I have to presume though, that nuclear power stations themselves are protected from CME caused damage, I don't know about that, but they could well be vulnerable to hackers, but I guess it's something that no one wants to talk about so much.
At the end of the day though a big enough CME could wreck everything coast to coast in the power supply, actual power stations aside. Hacking, substations that AngryCymraeg mentioned is more likely to be limited though bad enough, like for instance in the Atlantic seaboard of the US where there are a small but key number of substations in a very dense area. But I guess someone is working on it. Nuclear power stations though, are something else.

a reply to: stormcell

It did? No it didnt..at least for the 48 contiguous states. Don't get me wrong Carrington events happen...but no...I was alive and kicking as an adult and no cme or some such dropped the USA and Canada's power...come on

originally posted by: BlueJacket
a reply to: stormcell

It did? No it didnt..at least for the 48 contiguous states. Don't get me wrong Carrington events happen...but no...I was alive and kicking as an adult and no cme or some such dropped the USA and Canada's power...come on

Sure did

On March 10, 1989, a CME about the size of 36 Earths erupted from the sun's roiling surface and ripped through space at a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) per hour. Two days later, the torrid gas cloud crashed against Earth's magnetosphere—the magnetic field generated by the planet's spinning molten iron core that helps deflect the solar wind and more potent solar jetsam. This blast from the sun severely disrupted the magnetosphere and set off a geomagnetic superstorm.

1989 CME

WIKI

You must off been sleeping LOL
Took almost a week to repair our FlakeBoard mill running again
Made a ton of money on overtime 18 to 20 hours day's repairing PLC and motor controller LOL

a reply to: Trillium

Bunch of fooey never happened...keep believing HIStory

a reply to: Vasa Croe

We're in a solar maximum part of the solar cycle right now - it's very weak, one the weakest since the 1700's - and it's fading. Thing is, some of the biggest flares and magnetic storms happen during the 'fade' - audit's already started. Then there's the budget thing...

...many researchers have started calling the ongoing peak a "Mini-Max."

...Pesnell believes that "Solar Cycle 24, such as it is, will probably start fading by 2015." Ironically, that is when some of the bigger flares and magnetic storms could occur. Biesecker has analyzed historical records of solar activity and he finds that most large events such as strong flares and significant geomagnetic storms typically occur in the declining phase of solar cycles—even weak ones.

Indeed, this "Mini-Max" has already unleashed one of the strongest storms in recorded history. ...