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

Chapter Four: What Makes the Energy System Vulnerable? 49radiotoxins which will neither affect nor be affected by processing but wouldbe widely dispersed by subsequent burning of the refined products. Like a suspicionof botulin toxin in canned foods, they could make substantial amountsof petroleum products unfit for use (or, for that matter, for destruction by conventionalmeans), and could be an effective means of extortion. 65 Alternatively,certain substances could be introduced which are potent poisons of refinerycracking catalysts. There are technical reasons why it would be difficult tomake this form of sabotage effective, but it could be important in specializedcircumstances, and could at least have considerable nuisance value.• The national grid of natural gas pipelines—over a million miles for transmissionand distribution—offers an inviting route for dispersing unpleasant materials.In early 1981, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found thatnatural gas systems in Southern California, Chicago, and Long Island hadbecome accidentally contaminated with liquid polychlorinated biphenyls(PCBs). Manufacture of this extremely persistent and toxic liquid was bannedin the U.S. in 1976, but it is still widely used in older transformers, capacitors,and similar equipment. 66 Not only retail distribution systems but also some segmentsof interstate pipelines and their gate stations were contaminated. EPAthinks the PCBs may have entered the gas lines as a pump or compressorlubricant many years ago, perhaps via leaky seals. The PCBs detected in retailcustomers’ meters are not so far believed to mean that burning the gas hadactually released significant amounts of PCBs indoors. Nonetheless, there arecheap, very disagreeable substances which could be deliberately introduced inbulk into the national grid from any of thousands of loosely supervised accesspoints. Such substances could be widely distributed and released before likelydetection. Some could contaminate the inside of the pipelines—the third largestfixed asset in all American industry—so as to make them very difficult to cleanup. To determine whether a major public hazard could be caused in this waywould require further analysis at an indiscreet level of specificity; but it appearsthere is, at a minimum, a potential for causing public anxiety and disruption.• Another category of potential threats might involve the fuel distribution systemor, local storage tanks. Some organisms promote the gelling of liquid fuel:fungi and bacteria, for example, turned oil stored in South African goldminesinto a gel that was very hard to re-extract. 67 Although the bacteria developedto eat oil slicks at sea are more effective in the laboratory than in field conditions,certain bacteria and fungi are a well-known cause of deterioration in jetfuel and other refined products stored in tanks containing a little air. (So faras is publicly known, such organisms cannot thrive in an airless environment.)68 In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned a studyby the University of Houston concerning microorganisms which could be