View source for Broken/Special:Badtitle/NS100:JamesMoore/Popular Science Supports Meier's Theory On Nuclear Core Meltdown Due To Solar Flare

An article in the July 2011 edition of Popular Science magazine, and on their website, claims that a high consequence, low frequency solar storm is an imminent threat to the safety of the Earth's nuclear power stations. The same claim that Meier made in [[Contact Report 516]].

''A solar disaster isn't a question of if, but when-and it looks like soon.''

    
    
        
''One of the biggest disasters we face would begin about 18 hours after the sun spit out a 10-billion-ton ball of plasma-something  it has done before and is sure to do again. When the ball, a charged  cloud of particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME), struck the  Earth, electrical currents would spike through the power grid.  Transformers would be destroyed. Lights would go out. Food would spoil  and-since the entire transportation system would also be shut down-go  unrestocked.'' 

''Within weeks, backup generators at nuclear power plants would have  run down, and the electric pumps that supply water to cooling ponds,  where radioactive spent fuel rods are stored, would shut off. Multiple  meltdowns would ensue. "Imagine 30 Chernobyls across the U.S.," says  electrical engineer John Kappenman, an expert on the grid’s  vulnerability to space weather. A CME big enough to take out a chunk of  the grid is what scientists and insurers call a high-consequence,  low-frequency event. Many space-weather scientists say the Earth is due  for one soon. Although CMEs can strike anytime, they are closely  correlated to highs in the 11-year sunspot cycle. The current cycle will  peak in July 2013.''

Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-05/are-we-prepared-catastrophic-solar-storm

Magazine article scan: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=19YR4JKUKD92w-Yt-pPxVzSzbthveO4pw1BYVZmScymYQ3cSxJVbSSlCduQ0r&hl=en_GB
{{wl-publish: 2011-07-09 10:49:30 +0100 | Jamesm }}