400 times Chernobyl

Sumner: We hear bits and pieces about solar storms every now and then, but usually, nothing happens. That’s because Earth's magnetic field acts as our shield. These solar storms tend to flare up during periods of heightened sun's activity. Occasionally, Earth's magnetic field fluctuates and weakens. If a massive solar storm hits at the exact moment our magnetic field is dipping, we could see significant voltage induction across the power grid. The last time we saw something like this was back in 1859 during the Carrington event, which caused telegraph systems all over the world to actually burst into flames.

The reality is that we have vastly more wiring crisscrossing the globe today than we did in 1859. If we ever face that perfect storm—a massive solar surge hitting right when the magnetic field is weak (and let's be honest, it's statistically inevitable)—our entire electrical grid could collapse. On top of that, the damage to large-scale transformers would be devastating, and those things aren't easy to replace; production is incredibly limited, mostly concentrated in places like China and India.

But a grid collapse isn't just about being stuck in the dark for a few days, weeks, or even months. It presents a much darker scenario: nuclear power plants losing their primary power source for reactor cooling. Most facilities have backup diesel generators, similar to what they used at Fukushima, but those only have enough fuel to run for a day or so. Once that runs out, just like what happened at Fukushima, the cooling stops, the reactor keeps heating up, and eventually, you get a meltdown or an explosion. This applies to spent fuel rods sitting in storage, too.

So, if this unavoidable coincidence of two natural events actually occurs, we could be looking at hundreds of simultaneous nuclear meltdowns. As a species, we seem to be just too shortsighted and cheap to properly engineer ourselves against this, even though it isn't even that prohibitively expensive. What we really need is electromagnetic (EM) hardening for critical infrastructure, along with massive fuel reserves—maybe a year's worth?—and EM hardening specifically for nuclear sites.

Given the current era of predatory idiots running things—managers and politicians who care more about cutting costs and closing departments than actual stability—what are the odds we actually invest a reasonable amount to prevent a global nuclear catastrophe? Personally, I’d say they're pretty slim.

Links:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/7301-...r-armageddon#7
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/storms2012/
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/...oactivity.html

I barely had the thread up for thirty seconds before the moderator moved me to a different subforum, basically telling me I should’ve used the search function first to see if someone had already started this discussion.
Why can't this stay in Politics? This is a political issue—honestly, it carries way more weight than most of the absolute garbage being posted in there right now.

Move this thread over to Natural Sciences. It’ll be way more interesting there, though we have already covered nuclear energy extensively. There is plenty of political fodder here, sure—like how ready we are as a society to cut back on energy usage to lower our reliance on nuclear power, or if we are actually willing to invest in new sources. But honestly, debating nuclear safety feels a bit hollow when you consider the hundreds of millions lost to warfare; almost every major conflict can be framed as a fight over energy resources, one way or another.

So, I think the discussion here should focus on the political paradigm regarding energy sources. As it stands, this topic is leaning too heavily into technology. If we are talking strictly about engineering, a meltdown was definitely a primary concern during the design phase.

Maybe this topic is just getting too dense for a casual chat.
Let me try to clarify: we aren't talking about engineering here; we’re talking about a political failure.
We have nuclear plants sitting there, and then we have a natural phenomenon that hits once every century or two.
When that event strikes, our power grid is going to take a massive hit, and if that happens, a significant portion of our nuclear reactors will head straight toward a meltdown.

The whole thing could be prevented quite easily for a relatively small amount of money. But, because the human race is generally pretty dim-witted, we cut corners and fail to secure ourselves. "Insurance" in this context means heavy-duty metal shielding for critical components, along with massive stockpiles of fuel and backup generators for the plants.
Those generators are vital; they provide the electricity needed for cooling systems if the main grid fails. Most plants have some level of backup, but rarely enough to sustain cooling for an entire year. They usually have enough autonomy to last a few days, simply because nobody anticipates a total collapse of the power supply lasting longer than 48 hours.

It really comes down to a political question: are we just a species of short-sighted, brainless creatures driven by destructive idiots who prioritize profit over people, or are we actually capable of investing a little bit into our own survival?

A complete breakdown of the electrical distribution system isn't something you just fix in a couple of years. For instance, companies like GE produce massive transformers—we're talking 200 to 300-ton beasts—occasionally for export, but if they don't have power, production stops dead. If the grid collapses, civilization as we know it would grind to a halt, leading to a staggering death toll: we're talking millions, maybe even hundreds of millions. There wouldn't be food or fuel distribution, which kills off food production and industry, which in turn wipes out spare parts for everything, including oil tankers. You'd see mass starvation, riots, looting, and a total societal meltdown.

If you layer hundreds of simultaneous nuclear meltdowns on top of that, you get a catastrophe that might not wipe out humanity entirely, but it would certainly claim hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives.

Solar farms and wind turbines aren't the silver bullet people think they are. We need to technically fortify the existing infrastructure, specifically the nuclear plants and all supporting systems.

That's why this is a matter of politics.

Alexander Lewis said:Maybe this topic is just getting too dense for a casual chat.
Let me try to clarify: we aren't talking about engineering here; we’re talking about a political failure.
We have nuclear plants sitting there, and then we have a natural phenomenon that hits once every century or two.
When that event strikes, our power grid is going to take a massive hit, and if that happens, a significant portion of our nuclear reactors will head straight toward a meltdown.

The whole thing could be prevented quite easily for a relatively small amount of money. But, because the human race is generally pretty dim-witted, we cut corners and fail to secure ourselves. "Insurance" in this context means heavy-duty metal shielding for critical components, along with massive stockpiles of fuel and backup generators for the plants.
Those generators are vital; they provide the electricity needed for cooling systems if the main grid fails. Most plants have some level of backup, but rarely enough to sustain cooling for an entire year. They usually have enough autonomy to last a few days, simply because nobody anticipates a total collapse of the power supply lasting longer than 48 hours.

It really comes down to a political question: are we just a species of short-sighted, brainless creatures driven by destructive idiots who prioritize profit over people, or are we actually capable of investing a little bit into our own survival?

A complete breakdown of the electrical distribution system isn't something you just fix in a couple of years. For instance, companies like GE produce massive transformers—we're talking 200 to 300-ton beasts—occasionally for export, but if they don't have power, production stops dead. If the grid collapses, civilization as we know it would grind to a halt, leading to a staggering death toll: we're talking millions, maybe even hundreds of millions. There wouldn't be food or fuel distribution, which kills off food production and industry, which in turn wipes out spare parts for everything, including oil tankers. You'd see mass starvation, riots, looting, and a total societal meltdown.

If you layer hundreds of simultaneous nuclear meltdowns on top of that, you get a catastrophe that might not wipe out humanity entirely, but it would certainly claim hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives.

Solar farms and wind turbines aren't the silver bullet people think they are. We need to technically fortify the existing infrastructure, specifically the nuclear plants and all supporting systems.

That's why this is a matter of politics.

Yeah, that's a political question alright.
Are we just a low-IQ civilization doomed to keep tripping over the same stones because we're being led by sociopaths and greedy bastards?!!

The topic is fine. Interesting. It even touches on the security implications of a situation like this—something that could basically wipe out an entire era. A total reset for humanity.

Alexander Lewis said:Sumner: We hear bits and pieces about solar storms every now and then, but usually, nothing happens. That’s because Earth's magnetic field acts as our shield. These solar storms tend to flare up during periods of heightened sun's activity. Occasionally, Earth's magnetic field fluctuates and weakens. If a massive solar storm hits at the exact moment our magnetic field is dipping, we could see significant voltage induction across the power grid. The last time we saw something like this was back in 1859 during the Carrington event, which caused telegraph systems all over the world to actually burst into flames.

The reality is that we have vastly more wiring crisscrossing the globe today than we did in 1859. If we ever face that perfect storm—a massive solar surge hitting right when the magnetic field is weak (and let's be honest, it's statistically inevitable)—our entire electrical grid could collapse. On top of that, the damage to large-scale transformers would be devastating, and those things aren't easy to replace; production is incredibly limited, mostly concentrated in places like China and India.

But a grid collapse isn't just about being stuck in the dark for a few days, weeks, or even months. It presents a much darker scenario: nuclear power plants losing their primary power source for reactor cooling. Most facilities have backup diesel generators, similar to what they used at Fukushima, but those only have enough fuel to run for a day or so. Once that runs out, just like what happened at Fukushima, the cooling stops, the reactor keeps heating up, and eventually, you get a meltdown or an explosion. This applies to spent fuel rods sitting in storage, too.

So, if this unavoidable coincidence of two natural events actually occurs, we could be looking at hundreds of simultaneous nuclear meltdowns. As a species, we seem to be just too shortsighted and cheap to properly engineer ourselves against this, even though it isn't even that prohibitively expensive. What we really need is electromagnetic (EM) hardening for critical infrastructure, along with massive fuel reserves—maybe a year's worth?—and EM hardening specifically for nuclear sites.

Given the current era of predatory idiots running things—managers and politicians who care more about cutting costs and closing departments than actual stability—what are the odds we actually invest a reasonable amount to prevent a global nuclear catastrophe? Personally, I’d say they're pretty slim.

Links:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/7301-...r-armageddon#7
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/storms2012/
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/...oactivity.html

That isn't how this works. No mass meltdown is going to happen.

If there's a power failure, the SCRAM system kicks in. It uses gravity to drop control rods straight into the reactor core to shut everything down immediately.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...RAM_button.jpg

The reactors at Fukushima were shut down the moment the wave hit. The real issue was simply that the tsunami waves were much higher than anyone anticipated, which caused the structural damage inside.

If you don't get the cooling systems running, those control rods are going to melt through after a certain amount of time.
The whole system was designed under the assumption that a nuclear failure is an immediate emergency—basically, the backup cooling systems aren't fueled up enough to keep things steady for very long.
What I’m actually worried about here is the catastrophic damage to the core infrastructure of the power grid. If we get hit by a massive solar storm while the magnetic field is weak, it’ll induce currents along the high-voltage lines that could effectively fry a huge chunk, if not all, of our transformers. Once that happens, nuclear plants lose their constant power supply, and within a few days, they start facing critical issues. Whether they can scramble to get more diesel and generators delivered in time to patch things together, or if they just slide straight into a meltdown, is anyone's guess. And frankly, the nuclear plants aren't even the only problem.

A total collapse of the electrical grid would essentially mean the end of modern civilization as we know it. Current estimates suggest we could lose upwards of 2,000 EHV transformers. Right now, the industry builds about 100 EHV transformers a year. We used to produce more, but once these massive units are installed, they stick around for decades, and demand only spiked recently because of the massive grid expansions happening in India and China. Currently, there's about a three-year waiting list for an EHV transformer. If the grid actually breaks down, there is no way we could ramp up production fast enough to prevent absolute chaos. We've seen smaller versions of this: a transformer failure caused by a solar storm hitting the surface once left over a million people in the dark in Canada, and we've seen similar struggles in Sweden and South Africa, where the outages were so severe that millions faced rolling blackouts for months until the system was fixed.

Try to wrap your head around a scenario where most of the world loses its power distribution system, perhaps leaving only 10% functional. That means manufacturing stops dead, traffic becomes a nightmare, agriculture fails, and food spoils because refrigerators are useless. You'd have mass panic, people fleeing blindly, riots, gang warfare, and widespread famine. We’d be looking at a situation resembling Somalia, and it would likely take us decades to pull ourselves back from the brink and restore some semblance of order and civilization.

And that’s assuming we avoid a meltdown. If you factor in multiple large-scale meltdowns on top of that, combined with wars fought over whatever resources are left, we are talking about potentially the greatest mass mortality event in human history.

Steven Allen9 said:Yeah, that's a political question alright.
Are we just a low-IQ civilization doomed to keep tripping over the same stones because we're being led by sociopaths and greedy bastards?!!

The topic is fine. Interesting. It even touches on the security implications of a situation like this—something that could basically wipe out an entire era. A total reset for humanity.

Exactly. The fundamental issue is how incompetent and foolish we are as a species. We built an entire electrical grid that our civilization literally cannot survive without, yet we failed to secure it against rare events we already know have happened multiple times before. And frankly, that insurance wouldn't even cost much. US analysts calculated it would cost the USA about a billion dollars. That’s pocket change. You could buy half a fleet of B2 bombers or a single new destroyer with that. If we weren't so dense, we could produce our own protection and keep that money circulating within our own society.

The reality is we live in a system defined by massive imbalances. Some people rake in thousands of times more than others, while we essentially sabotage our own productivity and equitable distribution. Now, with this shift toward a virtual economy, we’re losing any actual connection to physical reality.

In a way, we’ve become parasites on a system we take entirely for granted. We place immense value on things like Facebook, smartphones, and CDS, all while assuming the power will always stay on—assuming it doesn't cost much because "some guy with a screwdriver" can just fix it.

My only hope is that a storm hits a small enough area to serve as a wake-up call for everyone else. If we get hit by something like the Carrington event from the 19th century, which lasted for days, we’d be thrown straight back into the Middle Ages. Without electricity, over 50% of the population would likely starve. Compared to that, nuclear meltdowns are child's play.

If nothing else, we finally have a clear picture of what’s going down this December 😁

Assuming every single "worst-case scenario" protocol fails miserably 😁

Nuclear power is one of those rare topics that actually manages to get under my skin.
Nuclear plants are safer, greener, and more cost-effective than all other energy sources combined—provided you don't count renewables, which aren't actually viable at scale or economically sound.

The USA needs at least one more nuclear plant. I wouldn't even mind if it were located out in rural Wyoming, just a few miles from my house.

I find it hard to believe that the entire political establishment is actually this incompetent. They wouldn't just let something like this happen. When you look at what went down at Fukushima, that was an impossible set of circumstances. But for a situation like this? There’s almost certainly a pre-planned scenario in play, especially following the disaster mentioned above.

coastalridge64 said:I find it hard to believe that the entire political establishment is actually this incompetent. They wouldn't just let something like this happen. When you look at what went down at Fukushima, that was an impossible set of circumstances. But for a situation like this? There’s almost certainly a pre-planned scenario in play, especially following the disaster mentioned above.

What really gets to me is how widespread the panic has become in Germany—a country that's supposed to be the gold standard for being modern and advanced. 👎

By the way, in California alone, there are 1,000 documented illegal dumping sites. Who even knows how many more are flying under the radar?

Essentially, we’re dealing with a thousand tiny environmental disasters threatening our flora, fauna, and waterways right now. Yet, people seem far more preoccupied with how Japan is light-years ahead of us in sustainability than they are with the literal toxins flowing through the water we drink. And don't even get me started on those coal plants—they're a hundred times more dangerous than nuclear power, yet we walk past their waste and breathe their exhaust every single day.

coastalridge64 said:I find it hard to believe that the entire political establishment is actually this incompetent. They wouldn't just let something like this happen. When you look at what went down at Fukushima, that was an impossible set of circumstances. But for a situation like this? There’s almost certainly a pre-planned scenario in play, especially following the disaster mentioned above.

But how did it happen if it's supposedly impossible?? 😕😕

Paul Johnson5 said:But how did it happen if it's supposedly impossible?? 😕😕

That earthquake was stronger than most on record.
An article published shortly after pointed out that an earthquake of that magnitude would have leveled most buildings in Washington, D.C.

In the USA and Japan, we deal with way more earthquakes, tornadoes, and tidal waves than they do in Europe. And strangely enough, they aren't terrified of nuclear energy. We, on the other hand, absolutely are. It isn't just that we haven't experienced a quake like that before; most of us wouldn't have survived it anyway.

rowdyowl said:That earthquake was stronger than most on record.
An article published shortly after pointed out that an earthquake of that magnitude would have leveled most buildings in Washington, D.C.

In the USA and Japan, we deal with way more earthquakes, tornadoes, and tidal waves than they do in Europe. And strangely enough, they aren't terrified of nuclear energy. We, on the other hand, absolutely are. It isn't just that we haven't experienced a quake like that before; most of us wouldn't have survived it anyway.

So, my point is that if it happened, it happened. It isn't impossible. I just find it hilarious when people claim something occurred because of some "impossible" set of circumstances.

Paul Johnson5 said:So, my point is that if it happened, it happened. It isn't impossible. I just find it hilarious when people claim something occurred because of some "impossible" set of circumstances.

What I meant was, it's "impossible" in Europe—well, as impossible as it was at Chernobyl.