Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power. … A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation’s infrastructure lies in tatters. …. An extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims [the Sun] could do just that. … A severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people. … this whole situation would not improve for months, maybe years: melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced. … Within a month, then, the handful of spare transformers would be used up. The rest will have to be built to order, something that can take up to 12 months. … According to the NAS report, the impact of what it terms a “severe geomagnetic storm scenario” could be as high as $2 trillion. And that’s just the first year after the storm. The NAS puts the recovery time at four to 10 years.
According to the Department of Homelamd Security report http://nextbigfuture.com/20..., the estimated protection cost is $150 million, and not $10 million.
Well the wikipedia link on the 1859 storm says it took 18 hours for the massive coronal ejection to actually get to earth. So in 18 hours, we can't just open all the relevant breakers (that are set up trip almost instantly during overload conditions)? I understand just shutting down power generation doesn't help any, but I have to think there's a way to break the loops in the distribution system and save all/most of the transformers. So you have a 24/48/72 hour blackout, which causes some significant problems, but certainly doesn't leave millions dead (as destroying most of the electrical infastructure might plausibly does over a year).
Buy spare transformers, lots of them and put them in secure storage depots throughout the nation along with other spare parts. This might well cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is the only decent defense you can make for this critical part of our infrastructure against what I call the attack of the 24 angry rednecks (so named because 24 angry rednecks could easily cause the scenario depicted in the original post with nothing more than hunting weapons, improvised explosives, cell phones, and pickup trucks). Unfortunately the US is notoriously slothful in the area of civil defense, and has been since at least the 80s. It's almost comical that we spend crazy amounts of money on missile defense but don't spend the far smaller amounts of money needed to protect against attacks like these. News flash, almost every nation on earth can field 24 angry rednecks, although the local translation may vary.
I believe there are significant network effects and dependencies in the power grid (although I've no direct knowledge of the engineering involved). A single operator who installs protection may be doing very little to protect himself unless others do the same. Such a coordination problem could account for the reluctance of existing operators to spend on protection. Although, 10 million does seem almost absurdly low.
Why not? If the US military has a stockpile of spare equipment to bring out in the event another nation uses an EMP on us, then they would not want other nations to know that we have that stockpile, since if they did then they would probably try to locate and target it too.
I think robin has mistitled this article. He isn't advocating insurance for space weather - he is advocating preventing the disaster by hardening transformers or building up a stockpile of them.
He should rename it "preparations for space storms" or "mitigate space storms"
Was there ever a single case of huge stakes single event insurance working properly? I would guess it would be heads you pay insurance premium, tails insurer goes bankrupt or is bailed out by taxpayers, just like with the current financial crisis.
Markets and prediction markets can be wonderful sometimes, but they are not universal solutions to every single problem in the world.
Something is wrong with these numbers. If this is a commonly-accepted, documented risk, and would cost only $10 million nationwide (that's less than 600 bucks per source listed in http://www.eia.doe.gov/cnea..., then individual managers would simply be stupid not to protect themselves from recrimination.
Many might be so stupid, but not most or all. Someone along the line is giving you incorrect estimates of probability, severity, or cost of protection.
According to the Department of Homelamd Security report http://nextbigfuture.com/20..., the estimated protection cost is $150 million, and not $10 million.
Robin, what's the source of the $10 million estimate? I don't see it in the linked materials.
mtc, the real problem is that we may not have nearly that much time of warning.
Well the wikipedia link on the 1859 storm says it took 18 hours for the massive coronal ejection to actually get to earth. So in 18 hours, we can't just open all the relevant breakers (that are set up trip almost instantly during overload conditions)? I understand just shutting down power generation doesn't help any, but I have to think there's a way to break the loops in the distribution system and save all/most of the transformers. So you have a 24/48/72 hour blackout, which causes some significant problems, but certainly doesn't leave millions dead (as destroying most of the electrical infastructure might plausibly does over a year).
Buy spare transformers, lots of them and put them in secure storage depots throughout the nation along with other spare parts. This might well cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is the only decent defense you can make for this critical part of our infrastructure against what I call the attack of the 24 angry rednecks (so named because 24 angry rednecks could easily cause the scenario depicted in the original post with nothing more than hunting weapons, improvised explosives, cell phones, and pickup trucks). Unfortunately the US is notoriously slothful in the area of civil defense, and has been since at least the 80s. It's almost comical that we spend crazy amounts of money on missile defense but don't spend the far smaller amounts of money needed to protect against attacks like these. News flash, almost every nation on earth can field 24 angry rednecks, although the local translation may vary.
I believe there are significant network effects and dependencies in the power grid (although I've no direct knowledge of the engineering involved). A single operator who installs protection may be doing very little to protect himself unless others do the same. Such a coordination problem could account for the reluctance of existing operators to spend on protection. Although, 10 million does seem almost absurdly low.
Why not? If the US military has a stockpile of spare equipment to bring out in the event another nation uses an EMP on us, then they would not want other nations to know that we have that stockpile, since if they did then they would probably try to locate and target it too.
shocked at that low 10 million number
I hope you will push this issue. Seems like one where public intellectuals with platforms like this could actually make a real world difference.
Yes, my use of the word "insurance" was needlessly confusing.
And in defence of decision markets/futarchy, they would almost certainly have recommended paying up $10million by now.
I think robin has mistitled this article. He isn't advocating insurance for space weather - he is advocating preventing the disaster by hardening transformers or building up a stockpile of them.
He should rename it "preparations for space storms" or "mitigate space storms"
Was there ever a single case of huge stakes single event insurance working properly? I would guess it would be heads you pay insurance premium, tails insurer goes bankrupt or is bailed out by taxpayers, just like with the current financial crisis.
Markets and prediction markets can be wonderful sometimes, but they are not universal solutions to every single problem in the world.
Something is wrong with these numbers. If this is a commonly-accepted, documented risk, and would cost only $10 million nationwide (that's less than 600 bucks per source listed in http://www.eia.doe.gov/cnea..., then individual managers would simply be stupid not to protect themselves from recrimination.
Many might be so stupid, but not most or all. Someone along the line is giving you incorrect estimates of probability, severity, or cost of protection.
Sorry, that is just not plausible.
Power firms have some incentive, but just far out of proportion to social value, so they will do far too little relative to what should be done.
It's possible that we are prepared but for whatever reason our preparations are classified.