WASHINGTON – A warning bell is being sounded urging the federal government to take the steps necessary to prepare for an electromagnetic pulse that could cause massive blackouts and damage the nation’s electric grid.
Experts maintain an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) resulting from a high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon high above the jet stream -- perhaps by a rogue state -- or a geomagnetic “super storm” caused by the sun could conceivably lead to a blackout lasting months or even years. A 2008 report by the congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse found that up to nine out of 10 Americans could die from a long-term blackout as a result of starvation and societal collapse.
The world almost found out what life would be like in the wake of a super storm in 2012, according to NASA, which places the possibility of such an event at 12 percent per decade, meaning that a catastrophe could occur within the lifetime of those currently populating the planet.
But the House Subcommittee on Interior National Security learned that little is being done to prepare for an EMP on the national level, leaving much of the work to the states.
EMP and GMD events represent “a class of high-consequence disasters that is unique in its coverage, ubiquity and simultaneous system debilitation,” he said. They require particular attention with regard to preparedness and recovery since assistance from non-affected regions of the nation could be scarce or nonexistent.
Neither President Obama nor Congress have moved to implement policies regarding EMP. The House in 2008 passed the Grid Act and the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act but neither made it through the Senate.
States should harden their electric grids against nuclear EMP attack because “there is a clear and present danger, because protecting against nuclear EMP will mitigate all lesser threats and because both the federal government in Washington and the electric power industry have failed to protect the people from the existential peril that is an EMP catastrophe,” he said.
There are two types of EMP events, according to Baker. In the first, gamma rays resulting from a nuclear blast interact with stratospheric air molecules. That couples with electrical and electronic systems in general, regardless of the length of their penetrating cables and antenna lines. Exposed systems may be upset or permanently damaged under that scenario.
In the other event, the earth’s magnetic field lines are distorted as a result of the expanding nuclear fireball and the rise of heated and ionized layers of the ionosphere. The change of the magnetic field at the earth’s surface induces currents of hundreds to thousands of amperes in long conducting lines that damage components of the electric power grid itself as well as powered systems. Long-line communication systems are also affected.
In the case of solar storms, charged particles from the sun interact with the Earth’s magnetic field. Electrojets from these storms can generate overvoltages in long-line systems over large regions of the earth’s surface, affecting electric power and communication transmission networks.
The nation should undertake several initiatives, Baker said. A national executive agency should be created within either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Defense with the first order of business being the development of a national EMP/GMD protection plan and a set of national planning scenarios.
Baker said the nation also needs to create a national program to protect the electric power grid, including essential supporting infrastructures used for fuel supply and communication.
And Congress should establish an independent commission solely focused on electric grid reliability with the authority to issue and enforce regulations similar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Baker told the panel that the lack of progress in protecting critical infrastructure from EMP and GMD centers on the fact that responsibility is distributed.
In response to the situation, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) has introduced the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which, among other things requires the Department of Homeland Security to include EMP threats in its national planning scenarios and conduct a campaign to proactively educate owners and operators of critical infrastructure, emergency planners, and emergency responders at all levels of government of EMP threats.
That bill is currently before the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies.