British Government Prepares For Solar Storms 52
judgecorp writes "The British Government has announced its plans to handle solar storms. The idea is to improve the resilience of infrastructure, including satellite communications — which the government says will also be useful against the future possibility of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. From the report: 'National Grid and DECC are building on the work of the Space Environment Impacts Evaluation Group and E3C to analyse the range of impacts of extreme space weather events, with the Carrington Event being adopted as the reasonable worst case. These scientific assessments have enabled National Grid to change the design requirements for its Supergrid transformers, and to increase its reserve holding of transformers. National Grid is currently developing improved monitoring tools with the British Geological Survey (BGS) and installing or reinstalling Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC) monitoring devices into its Strategic Asset Management program. The next steps will be for National Grid, in association with BGS and working with E3C, to develop more detailed modelling of severe space weather events including impacts on generator transformers. This will extend and strengthen its analysis on the electricity transmission system completed so far.'"
Re:Solar Storms/Flares (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Paranoid Wankers (Score:4, Informative)
I would imagine there'd be more issues about providing food to the populace than "communicating for business and political purposes".
Or do you really think that the grocery stores and such are going to keep right on going with no power for, say, refrigerators?
Having lived through Katrina (I was in the eye of Katrina for a bit), I'm not especially thrilled at the possibility that power distribution might be knocked out over a large part of the world....