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

140Disasters Waiting to Happenwithout fundamental uncertainties about how grids can behave.In summary, a small group of people—perhaps one able person in some circumstances—couldblack out practically any city or region, whether by bruteforcesabotage of a key switching or transmission facility or of one of the operationallifelines of giant power plants (such as cooling water or fuel transportation),or instead by an elegantly economical disruption of control andcommunication systems. With careful selection of targets and of their mostvulnerable times (peak loads, options limited by pre-existing outages, unfavorableweather for repair, etc.), it should not be beyond the ability of sometechnically astute groups to halt most or all of the electrical supply in any ofAmerica’s three synchronous grid regions. These blackouts can be engineeredin such a way as to cause substantial damage to major items of equipment,probably requiring months or years to repair. It is conceivable that similarbreakdowns could arise from a combination of natural disasters or technicalmishaps, imperfect utility response, and incomplete understanding of theoperational dynamics of big grids.However caused, a massive power-grid failure would be slow and difficultto repair, would gravely endanger national security, and would leave lastingeconomic and political scars. It is not pleasant to have in the back of one’smind that the next time the lights blink out, they may take an exceedinglylong time to come back on again.