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

72Brittle PowerUnited Kingdom, and the mainland United States. The attacks cited in theseforty countries are only a sampling of items from the public press. It is likely thatmany such incidents are not reported: in many countries they would be consideredstate secrets: A fuller search, too would doubtless turn up more instances.Concern over the military vulnerability of centralized energy facilities isnot unique to beleaguered countries (like Israel) or those like China whichhave a decentralist and civil-defense-oriented tradition. For example, theFrench military establishment reportedly wishes to reduce national vulnerabilityby decentralizing the energy system. 38 This desire was doubtless heightenedby the “impossible” cascading failure of virtually the entire French electricgrid on 19 December 1978, with lost production officially estimated atnearly one billion dollars. 39 The security benefits of the greatest possible energydecentralization, especially through the use of renewable sources, form akey component of at least one of the several lines of official French energy policy.40 Even in the Soviet Union—where central electrification has been a sacredtenet of the Communist Party since Lenin declared Communism to consist of“collectives plus electrification”—there isreportedly a standing argument between the Soviet military and thePolitburo.... The military argues that decentralized energy systems are of primaryimportance for civil defense and therefore essential to Soviet nationalsecurity. The Politburo insists on centralization of primary energy systems inorder to ensure party control, and is apparently prepared to risk a significantdegree of national security to do so. 41Electronic vulnerabilityThe new technical dimensions of modern warfare and of modern energysystems have recently combined to produce new types of vulnerability whichare not related just to the size or centralization of individual plants, but alsoto how they are controlled and interconnected. For example, just as oil andgas pipelines must be remotely monitored and controlled at hundreds ofpoints by sophisticated computers and electronic communications, so no partof the synchronous electric grid can function without continuous communicationsfrom centralized, computerized control points. Utility and regionalpower pool dispatchers must be in constant contact with each other and withdevices and staff in the field. This control and communication system nowfaces a novel threat from nuclear warfare—a threat that makes the physicalvulnerability of particular plants to nuclear attack pale by comparison. 42The new vulnerability is caused by “electromagnetic pulse” (EMP)—a briefbut very powerful electromagnetic field produced by nuclear explosions at