Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

126Disasters Waiting to Happenconnected with the rest of the country), carry almost no stocks. SanFrancisco’s entire gas storage capacity would last one local gas-fired powerplant for only fourteen hours. 4Power plants’ complex, special-purpose machinery itself is vulnerable to disruption,even by low-technology means. Modern turboalternators, for example,are so big, yet so delicate, that when not spinning they must have theirshafts rotated a fraction of a turn several times per hour, by hand if necessary,lest their own weight ruin them by bending the shaft out of true. (On occasion,as during the Three Mile Island accident, this service has been difficult to providein the face of evacuation requirements.) It is because of this delicacy thatan insider using a simple hand tool was able to damage dozens of coils, manybeyond repair, on three of the world’s largest electric generators (each producingseven hundred megawatts from a rotor sixty-one feet in diameter) in thebowels of Grand Coulee Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric plant. 5The vulnerability of central power stations is not a new issue. In 1966, theDefense Electric Power Administration pointed out thatfewer than two hundred cities and towns of over fifty thousand population containabout sixty percent of the population and associated industrial capacity of thenation. The larger generating facilities tend to be located near[by]....Generatingcapacity is the most difficult, costly, and time consuming component of an electricpower system to replace and also tends to be highly concentrated geographically.If any portion of the power system is to be considered a primary [strategic]target, it would be these large generating plants....Is the concentration of powergeneration making the industry more vulnerable...? 6In the intervening sixteen years, the question has been often repeated. Yetthe concentration has increased, with major power plants being drawn tourban areas and probably encouraging urbanization and industrial concentrationin their turn. Congress’s Joint Committee on Defense Productionobserved:Although there are about three and a half thousand companies involved in generatingand distributing electricity, about half of our total electrical capacity comesfrom fewer than three hundred generating stations. Most of these are located inor near our major urban-industrial areas. The electric utilities therefore present arelatively compact and especially inviting set of targets for a saboteur, a terroristor an attacker, as well as a lightning bolt. 7This concentration is less than that of some other energy facilities such asmajor pipelines, large refineries, and key smelters. 8 But it is also uniquely true ofpower stations that the loss of substantial generation or transmission capacity