Extreme space weather has a global footprint and the potential to damage critical infrastructure on the ground and in space. A new report from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) calls for bridging knowledge gaps and for better coordination at EU level to reduce the potential impact of space weather events.
The sun shapes the space environment around the Earth. This so-called space weather can affect space assets but also critical infrastructure on the ground, potentially causing service disruptions or infrastructure failures. Numerous space weather events affecting the power grid, aviation, communication, and navigation systems have already been documented.
The impact of severe space weather can cross national borders, which means that a crisis in one country can affect the infrastructure in the neighbouring countries. This raises concerns due to the increasing reliance of society on the services that these infrastructures provide.
New report identifies knowledge gaps
The JRC has investigated the impacts of space weather on critical infrastructure in the EU. A new report identifies the gaps in reducing risks linked to space weather and makes recommendations for policy, industry and science on how to close these gaps.
The report summarises the results of a summit organised in partnership with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and the UK Met Office, with the support of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in November 2016. Representatives from European infrastructure operators, insurance, academia, ESA, and European and US government agencies attended the event.
Interdependencies and crisis response
The potential failure of critical infrastructures during extreme space weather can lead to cascading effects impacting other sectors.
New methodologies and tools, as well as a multi-risk governance approach are needed to assess these interdependencies and to enable the coordination of the many different actors that often manage risks in isolation from one other.
A pan-European vulnerability assessment of the power grid should be carried out to identify critical issues and transboundary effects in case of extreme space weather. Infrastructure operators should also assess whether their systems could be indirectly vulnerable to space weather, for instance due to dependencies on timing and positioning information provided by the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).
Better communication between science and industry is also needed to provide relevant and reliable information to operators for decision making.
Space weather forecasting
Early warning and preparedness are essential for limiting the effects of space-weather impacts.
In Europe and the USA, 24/7 space-weather forecasting capabilities are available to support the early warning of government and industry. However, it is important that the consistency of forecasts from different service providers are ensured.
There is a need to enhance forecasting capabilities for regional or local forecasts on the severity and duration of extreme space weather to ensure appropriate response from local operators.
Currently, geomagnetic storm forecasting is hampered by the limited understanding of the magnetic field orientation of Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) before they hit the Earth, and there are still significant knowledge gaps in physical and impact modelling, which affect the early-warning capabilities and preparedness in industry.
The role of the EU
In the EU, the European Programme on Critical Infrastructure Protection provides a policy background for critical infrastructure protection, while the EU disaster risk management policy covers prevention, preparedness and response for all types of disasters.
The Union Civil Protection Mechanism requires EU Member States to prepare a national risk assessment and list the priority risks they are facing. Six countries have included space weather in their risk assessment.
The participants of the summit indicated that there is a need for for improving coordination between the different space weather actors and recommended the establishment of a strategic European decision-making capability to coordinate space-weather risk mitigation and response at pan-European level.
They also advised that the roles and responsibilities of the key players in Europe should be better defined and suggested that coordinated strategic investments for improving the scientific know-how in this area could be explored.
Background
Different types of solar activity can impact the operations of critical infrastructures: Solar flares trigger radio blackouts and affect radar, ground- and space-based communications, as well as the GPS network. Solar radiation storms are a threat to satellite operations, aviation and space flights. Geomagnetic storms, caused by the ejection of magnetised solar plasma which interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere, affect satellite, GPS, aviation, rail transport and power-grid operations.
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JRC Report: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC104231/space_weather_cover%2breport_final.pdf
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“The impact of severe space weather can cross national borders, which means that a crisis in one country can affect the infrastructure in the neighbouring countries. ”
More likely, the same solar activity that causes a problem in Country A will affect everybody on the globe. Unless you’re talking about a problem where Country A is providing all of the electricity/phone service/technology for their neighbors, and those parasite neighbors are affected by Country A’s woes.
Ironically, one solar flare could take out all the roof top solar that greens have has us all paying over the odds prices for, for that last 20 year.
Greg @ur momisugly 2:04
Could you elaborate on this…is it the effect on the grid or the panels themselves you refer to?
Alastair both, solar panels need transformers ( smaller scale but they would be fried). Although would be easier to protect. Not an expert but did look into the effect of EMPs. Protection could be done by grounding sort of like a Faraday cage.
Solar cells are whacking great big rectifier diodes.
The possibility of a solar flare destroying a solar cell on earth is negligible. A direct hit by a meteorite that happened to be steered by the solar wind to a correct intercept orbit to crash on your roof, would likely damage your roof as well as the solar cell.
And why isn’t whatever transformer you have inside a metal box. ??
The nonsense that wafts around the internet, in the guise of science, is mind boggling.
G
george e. smith @ur momisugly 4:44
Ah yes, but you will no doubt remember the Ellerslie (Auckland) meteorite in 2004 that came through the Archers’ roof…only a few km from the One tree Hill Observatory…any solar panels they might have had would have been toast.
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/video/4654/the-ellerslie-meteorite
But I agree…a good CME would be unlikely to do much damage to the solar cells themselves. Much more likely to fry the associated electronics and circuit boards…so probably no more power for a (long) while.
And, as you say @ur momisugly 4:52, probably a good idea for us all to keep a few boxes of ammo tucked away somewhere safe for a rainy (or solar stormy) day! Food and water could get mighty short for some folks after a few weeks/months waiting for new transformers from China.
Satellites’ electronics with no magnetic field protection may affected by strong radiation, on the Earth surface it is a different, the secondary effect of the electromagnetic induction. Only long metallic objects such as electric power and telephone lines (including transatlantic sea floor cables, not optical fibre itself but the steel wire reinforcing) may be damaged by high voltage impulses. Transformers and other electrical devices attached to the electric grid are damaged indirectly.
Faraday cage is no protection for the attached devices, if warned physically disconnect from the grid (unplug) simply switching off is no protection. Railway tracks, oil and gas pipelines due to the large cross-section and good earthing might be ok.
Solar panels and damage: if the incoming EMP is 50,000 volts per metre the damage wrought to the connections in PV panels from power coming through the wires is large. If one cell shorts, the other are lost unless the damaged section an be isolated.
Shielded electronic will be damaged by the few million volts coming down the wires. Your cell phone in a metal box, not so much. It will still work and you can charge it with the remnants of your PV panel, but there won’t be any network. This will allow you to document the subsequent calamity as it unfolds.
If we went with LIFTR, liquid salt thorium reactors, that could be autonomous, independent of human management, and serve individual buildings or same areas, we could eliminate the energy grid, decentralize energy and, with hardened, Faraday-cage construction they would be immune to most solar interference events.
We also could recycle virtually of of the copper and iron that makes up out huge, extensive power grid and in the process remove a huge footprint high voltage power towers impose on the environment.
“”””…..
Crispin in Waterloo but really in Bishkek
March 25, 2017 at 7:47 am
Solar panels and damage: if the incoming EMP is 50,000 volts per metre the damage wrought to the connections in PV panels from power coming through the wires is large. …..”””””
Well 5 megavolts per meter would do even more damage.
But do not worry !
I just made up that number; there’s no evidence the sun would cause such a field.
So WHERE did YOU get your 50,000 V/m electric field strength from solar charged particles hitting the earth atmosphere. ??
G
I would be more worried about meteorites taking out one of those thorium/and or any other nuclear tailings processing dams.
@ur momisugly Higley 7. That would be especially true if we could make LFTRs the size they were seeking to design — as a power plant for a large bomber aircraft. If we could get them anything like that size, huge grids would not be necessary. And also commercial shipping and aircraft transportation would be immediately changed and probably trains as well. Getting them down to truck/car size might be a problem but we could make carbon based fuels from CO2 in the air.
The European electricity grid has multiple interconnectors, potentially leading to multiple blackouts across the EU, should one country have a massive surge & trip. http://www.globalenergyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/europeansupergridmap.jpg
higley7 …..so i guess you would want to “Faraday cage’ the power lines exiting the mythical thorium power source as well??
What do you mean by mythical? Since the design was proven at Oak Ridge and ran for about 5 years. Or do you think we will never have it?
Um, no, he specified a hope for reactors powering individual buildings, or maybe local neighborhoods, so there would not be those “long” pieces of metal, the wires of the existing grid.
The threats that EMP and other space events can pose to our rather delicate electromagnetic structure has been well known for years and has been the subject of several survivalist novels. Of course we should better define the roles and responsibilities of those involved and better coordinate possible responses.
The paper appears to be reasonably balanced and hopefully will not be used as a basis for creating another crisis atmosphere.
Well its an EU paper telling us how good the EU is at warning us about crises that haven’t happened yet as opposed to its lamentable record in dealing with crises that are happening, like impending economic collapse and out of control migration, and the odd suicide terrorist here and there.
It’s the “Everyone wants to SaveThePlanet™ but nobody wants to help Mom with the dishes” problem.
? Joint Research Centre is not responsible for EU foreign policy.
So just when did any such happenstance occur; well in recorded history of the industrial era ??
I like your science fiction novel explanation better.
G
So the UK Met Office and NOAA are involved. This is probably just a very rare coincidence coming at a time when clamoring for more government funding support of Earth anthropogenic climate change research has become a bit of a hard sell in the absence of visible benefits from the billions already spent. I would be happy to see appropriate relevant investigation of space weather, but perhaps we should direct those funds to the investigators who told the truth, admitted uncertainties and made accurate predictions about Earth climate.
A nice aspiration, but once agencies etc are set up to look into this issue, then they will proliferate and behave in a way that ensures their survival. This is one of the laws of bureaucratic behaviour. This paper is less about the science than the associated ‘governance’ issues. This alone should sound a warning bell!
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
Taxpayer-funded bureaucrats should have to wear body cams with audio uploaded in real time to the cloud. We can talk about the remote shock collar option later.
Piper Paul, I LIKE the way you think.
andrewpattullo. Bravo!
The EU should change its name to FU.
Would this be the “union” called the “E. U.” ?
That Taxation Union whose decisions cannot be altered by ANY of it’s so-called members of parliament (“parliament” meaning “talk but don’t interfere: we’ll spend all your money and con you into paying more and more”).
Hogwash, fiddlesticks. This is all smoke and mirrors and it stinks.
I am afraid that is probably my reaction as well.
The EU is desperately trying to justify its existence as more and more peole are asking ‘what actually is the point of it?’ – and failing to actually come up with any answer…
+1
+2 Just a little while, and we’re finally out of it! Yippee!
By the way, this website is getting slower to load on both my laptop and my PC. Why?
Why? Install an ad-blocker and try again. 😉
Use Opera browser. Free ad blocker and VPN, which, by the way, is acceptable and runs at normal speed.
EU is far from perfect, but it will improve once an island monarchy with house of lords stops making as if and finally leaves.
Dreamer. It will collapse within 10 years.
Extreme geomagnetic storms at Kp=9 (G5) on average happen on about 4 days per sunspot cycle (could be 2×2 subsequent days), can generate aurora visible below 50 degree latitude (e.g. visible in Madrid, Miami or Cape Town ). These are important to the satellites operators and the over pole flying aircraft.
Carrington type events are extremely rare and well outside Kp ( 0 – 9 ) scale.
…but we really don’t know how rare. A couple of days warning is about all we’ll get.
Yep, couple of days with only the 50-50 chance depending on the magnetic polarity
Vuk that event was also directly aimed at Earth large events have happened pointed away from Earth as little as a few years ago and missed.
The sun subtends 1/2 deg. of angle, as seen from earth.
The sun is 100 times the diameter of earth so earth subtends about 18 arc seconds as seen from the sun.
It hardly knows we are here/
G
Hi Big G
That might be the case for the higher frequency end radiation. The CME is a cloud of charged particles which spreads to millions of km by time it reaches the earth.
https://youtu.be/sg3NAdOYp8Q
Well yes that is true Vuk; but the more it spreads, the better for us.
The only way those charged particles are going to do much on earth is if they all arrive in one solid chunk and land on my roof.
G
EMP is WAY overblown.
Vuk,
Auroral events take place in very rarified atmospheric densities. The residual air pressure is way less than the fill density of neon sign tubes, or fluorescent lamps, and those denser atmospheres are readily ionized by quite low energy charged particles; electrons or protons.
So the electric fields in the auroral regions are pretty modest, and if you were in the middle of one of those regions in a balloon, you wouldn’t even be aware of any electric fields of note.
The fact that solar CME s (I think that’s what Dr. S calls them) can create vivid Auroral displays, is NO assurance that they would have much effect at the earth’s condensed phase surfaces.
Can you just envisage the violent boiling of the ocean surface by energetic fields that can melt railway lines (according to one poster here).
I say it’s BS.
G
This could be a truly catastrophic event with the potential to disrupt power supplies, food distribution networks, water and sewage management, financial systems, traffic management etc etc, all of which make extensive use of IT.
In the absence of rapid back up and recovery, the basics of life would become short/unavailable within 7 days. Within 10/14 days violence and civil unrest would be widespread. If the basic infrastructure is impacted – eg: electricity substations/transformers – full recovery would be measured in years with direct impacts on quality of life and standard of living.
This is a potential catastrophe for which we must plan and budget accordingly – a real and potentially immediate risk (unlike climate change).
The grid is protected against such events. The voltage surge from a Carrington type event is a slow rising event. Much slower and for a single line, much less energy than is in your average lightning strike.
Yes, circuit breakers across the country would kick in resulting in a nationwide blackout, but the equipment will be fine. It will take a few hours to a few days for remote locations for the power to be restored.
Beyond that, we will have a day or two warning before it hits. More than enough time to shut down and isolate anything that might be critical and to call all workers back from vacation to work on restoring power when it’s over.
Your optimistic opinion on this seems at odds with multiple well documented studies. Do you have any citations to support your opinion?
Has anyone directly replicated the Carrington event vs copies of historical equipment in known configurations?
So hunter, if such events have been well documented, perhaps you can cite a reference to just one such well documented study of an event that fried railway lines or electrical power grids (hardware).
G
George,
An honorable person by now would have apologized for calling my factual statement about H-bomb design fiction.
You’ve been educated on the subject by people who know whereof we speak, unlike you, yet you still ignore us, after your driveby falsehood.
The 1989 CME was much smaller than Carrington. It cause satellite failures, radio blackouts, the Quebec blackout. Didn’t damage electronics, you need a nuke for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
Well I hope you have your bomb shelter well stocked with ammunition.
Oh ! and have some food in there as well.
G
My limited understanding of such an event is all electrical and electronic devices rendered useless, which would certainly cause civil unrest for those unprepared but to prepare for something like this that might never happen would take dedication and much ridicule.
Nice to see they have now switched from CAGW to something else , just in case .
Well just think of all of the lives that will be saved, from people walking off cliffs, or onto railroad tracks in front of trains.
A world devoid of functioning finger toys seems like a thing of beauty to me.
G
We have see riots start up within minutes of the power going out.
And those were regional blackouts.
if the power should go out across the country, and such riots commenced on a widespread basis, that could be a catastrophe all by itself.
“coordinated strategic investments”
Code words for new tax in the EU…….
How bad can it get:
http://www.leif.org/research/The-Geo-Response-Extreme-Events.pdf
Soooooo, you estimate that we could only experience an event that would be double the Carrington level? Not sure how to take that estimate……. what was the estimated reading on the Carrington event on our current scales again? Like a 40 or so?
Double the Carrington is bad enough.
double the Carrington level
=====================
Alarm bells rang when I read this. Lots of problems look near linear at low energies, only to later be found to be non-linear at higher energies.
We have only observed DPS for lower energies. We really don’t know if it will hold for higher energies. For example (see graph below), if you had only observed events with x-axis < 5, you might assume that a y-axis value of 100 was to be expected for x-axis = 10. While in fact, the actual y-axis value would be closer to 1000.
http://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/exponential3.png
not saying that this will be the case, just that nature tends more towards power law distributions than standard distributions, and as a result humans often underestimate the likelihood of extreme events.
PDF on a 2013 paper. Not sure, but it looks like Carrington was guestimated at X45 ish with a Dst of – 850 to -1,750 nT. ? Would that be your take also Leif? I read your 2004 paper with Cliver and wondered if anything has changed since then? It appears we got lucky in 2012 also with a near miss!
http://www.swsc-journal.org/articles/swsc/pdf/2013/01/swsc130015.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwif_IzKofLSAhXLRyYKHem-CnoQFghwMA4&usg=AFQjCNHer5nn5TqUzEXnvobayzA9fMX5Yw&sig2=0DLnP5pD6Ca1pNauyDilZg
Leif’s 2004 paper = link to PDF
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=qFdb2fIAAAAJ&citation_for_view=qFdb2fIAAAAJ:roLk4NBRz8UC
http://www.leif.org/EOS/swsv130015.pdf
And how much electric current will that induce in a km length of horizontal wire that is say 50 meters above the ground ??
G
So we might hear some crackling noises on out AM radios ??
G
That and much worse. A powerful CME induces strong currents in long North-South going power lines that can melt the big transformers:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Severe-Space-Weather-Events-Report.pdf
“the occurrence today of an event like the 1921 storm would result in large-scale blackouts affecting more than 130 million people and would expose more than 350 transformers to the risk of permanent damage.”
“Economic and societal costs attributable to impacts of geomagnetic storms could be of unprecedented levels.
For example, consider the following cost estimates:
• August 14, 2003, Northeast blackout: $4 billion to $10 billion,
• Hurricane Katrina: $81 billion to $125 billion,
• Future severe geomagnetic storm scenario: $1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year, and
• Depending on damage, full recovery could take 4 to 10 years.”
This bit of (to my mind) double-talk is indicative of what I think is the underlying concern of the EU techno-bureaucrats;
“In Europe and the USA, 24/7 space-weather forecasting capabilities are available to support the early warning of government and industry. However, it is important that the consistency of forecasts from different service providers are ensured.
There is a need to enhance forecasting capabilities for regional or local forecasts on the severity and duration of extreme space weather to ensure appropriate response from local operators.”
They are calling for the elimination of any variance from a central (EU) authority’s “forecasting”, but they phrase it in such a way as to make it sound like they mean enhancing the “forecasting capabilities” various forecasters . . Just saying taking it all over sounds so . . totalitarian, ya know ; )
The Solar storm of 1859—known as the Carrington Event—was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
Forget severe short term global cooling from some external forcing causing a crop failure in the northern hemisphere causing potential global strife/starvation over 1-2 years. If the 1859 CME were to hit earth tomorrow, the potential lack of cascading failures from satellite orbital decay, internet disruption and power line failure would be an immediate shot to the system that would cause widespread chaos. Depending on the severity of the event, might be a wake up call to earth about how fragile civilization has become. Maybe we need a bit of a wake up call to scare our pants off…
Just thinking about how challenging it would be to live in a much cooler world makes me think that the little bit of warming we have managed over the last 150 years is a real bonus for civilization to survive anything going wrong, so a boost in CO2 levels of 300 ppmv to 400 ppmv per ice age peak is really an issue about nothing much to see here. History will get the last word on this, and I am confident that future generations will thank us for raising the CO2 emissions to a level that will sustain life as we know it for several more ice ages to come. As for death by cosmic events, well, I guess we pay our money and we takes our chances.
Some people need to chill, read up a little about actual technology and relax.
1) The power grid will not fail. Worst case is a nationwide black out as circuit breakers across the country kick in. Once it’s over, power will be restored, it may take a few hours to a few days depending on how many crews are available.
2) The internet won’t go down.
3) While the orbital life of some low flying satellites may be shortened by a few days to weeks. We won’t have satellites crashing down right and left. Satellites in geo-synch orbit won’t be affected at all by atmospheric drag.
All those huge transformers that need trucks to move about could potentially be damaged beyond repair. The question to ask is how many replacements exist and how long it may take to make new ones (especially with limited power & transportation), not how many crews are available to replace them.
The answer is concerning at best. I got this from someone who installs these for a living.
MarkW “Some people need to chill, read up a little about actual technology and relax.”
I suppose the key issue is the severity of the CME event. Luckily, CME’s take a few days at least to arrive at earth, so we would have time to prepare by shutting down the grid for a half day while the storm passed earth. That may save the transformers, but some long power line conductors may fry out from inductance overload. The biggest problem would be the destruction of a lot of complicated circuit boards and electronics. Stuff that makes the internet run. And car/truck computer modules that may not work to operate the vehicle until replaced. GPS satellites would be out of calibration until reset and would use a lot of precious fuel restting themselves back to their proper orbit. Geo Sych sats would be particularly vulnerable to electronic chip frying, mainly because they are out in the open past the Van Allen Radiation belts but all low earth sats, especially the space station with humans aboard would have a lot of radiation to deal with as well. But the astronauts probably could bail back to earth in time. It would not be a pleasant day, week or month after a Carrington type of event today. Good informative article at NatGeo… http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/
Don’t live in south Australia do you Mark ?
A blackout is considered, by most people, a failure.
And if a blackout occurs due to the failure of a combination of large numbers of small transformers and large, hard-to-replace transformers, it could take a lot more than a few days.
It is extremely likely that many satellites would be rendered useless, their electronics damaged.
How hardened are things like medical devices and airplanes?
What about autos that now depend on a working gps system. How about cell phones.
All those huge transformers
===============
These transformers will take years to replace. It may be impossible to build new ones where the power is out. Until they are replaced, the power is out. It could take decades to bring the entire system back on line.
The worry is not just a solar event. The press has misunderstood what North Korea is building. The press have discounted the PRNK weapon because it is not a 2 step hydrogen bomb. What PRNK is building is a 1 step hydrogen enhanced weapon. This should worry the US, because it is a first strike EMP weapon. Significantly more effective as an EMP weapon than 2 step weapons.
Detonated at say 50 km altitude over Canada, the PRNK weapon could generate a 50,000 volts/meter EMP pulse over a large area of the continental US, with significant energies extending coast to coast. The resulting damage to electronics and the grid could devastate the US, without any need to land a weapon on US territory.
“…This should worry the US, because it is a first strike EMP weapon…” Read up on EMP. The conditions for it to occur are hard to achieve and the area covered is bounded. Chances of pulling it off coupled with the limited impact make it a poor choice of a weapon. The counter strike nuclear deterrent wins.
Ferd,
Yup. The Nork tests have been of essentially a giant “neutron bomb”, ie enhanced radiation warhead. Unlike the little Cold War artillery rounds, meant to kill Soviet tank crews with fast neutron flux without destroying nearby German towns, the new Nork nuke would release neutrons into the ionosphere to induce EMP over the much of the North American continent.
Soviet propaganda called the “neutron bomb” the “ideal capitalist weapon”, since it “killed people but left property intact”. Russian flaks failed to mention that the people were Red Army armored vehicle crew and soldier passengers and the property was the homes of German civilians. ERWs in any case weren’t bombs but six-inch howitzer projectiles.
In an H-bomb, the neutrons produced by fusion are used to cause fission in the depleted uranium jacket around the fusion core, which is ignited by a fission assembly. So it’s really a three-stage device, ie fission-fusion-fission. About half the yield typically comes from fission and half from fusion.
The West German government was OK with using such low-yield nukes on its own territory to stop invading Soviet and Warsaw Pact armor. The Warsaw Pact fielded over 200,000 armored fighting vehicles in the 1980s. NATO planners knew that our conventional forces couldn’t resist such an avalanche of steel.
In response, the Red Army put lead linings on top of its tanks in the Western Strategic Direction, but the effectiveness of this measure in slowing down ERW neutrons was questionable.
Actually boron in T-72, not lead. My bad. Export models lacked the NBC protection.
Has South Africa recovered yet from the last solar storm?
I personally worry about the accelerating rate of entropy…
Loss of enthalpy is even worse !
But it’s a dry cold.
I think Chimp is talking about a Fiction bomb. As far as I know; there’s NO depleted Uranium in an H-bomb.
But that’s as far as I know. And NO, I don’t want to know any further than that.
G
George,
Depleted uranium is used as a tamper in fission bombs and as a jacket in fusion bombs, just as I wrote. Using U-235 in the jacket increases the yield over U-238 (depleted U), but there is so much more DU and it’s so much cheaper that it’s the normal material.
You could look it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon#Design_variations
An exception is the W88 warhead for the MIRVed Trident D5 SLBM. Since sub-launched missiles are smaller than ICBMs, the USN needed to maximize yield out of a little MIRV warhead, so used U-235 in the jacket, along with a DU layer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88
This combo is called “oralloy”.
Speaking of Norks and the long-awaited demise of the Kim dynasty, no nukes need apply. B-2 bombers have the situation well in hand:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator
Sorry, George, but it’s fact, not fiction. Here is a standard ballistic missile warhead:
The earth-penetrating variant of the variable yield B61 thermonuclear bomb even has a DU bomb casing, in addition to the DU jacket in its physics package.
George,
It appears that as far as you know is far from far enough.
Also that you don’t know enough to comment on this topic and that you lack the courage and decency to admit that you were wrong and should not have presumed to comment on a subject about which you obviously are so deeply and thoroughly ignorant.
How dare you cast aspersions on a knowledgeable commentator without even bothering to do the least little bit of research before shooting your ignorant mouth off?
Last time I ever pay any attention to anything you spew.
Real humans of honor admit when they were wrong rather than cowering and hiding.
Shameful.
We knew less about our own seas than we did about the moon. So humanity sent a man to the moon.
We know less about our planets weather than we do about space weather, but doubtless we’ll send someone out there to study it as well.
All a bit coincidental really. Trump says NASA are to concentrate on space travel, so the greens get in first and start spreading their terrorism before we even get there.
I alerted the European actuarial profession to this in October last year. http://www.theactuary.com/opinion/2016/11/electromagnetic-shocks/
Here is the ultimate space weather problem, beyond grants and stuff. We already know it isn’t predictable. So grant seeking apps are largely useless. OTH, those apps domshow the waning of CAGW.
File this under large scale stimulus spending opportunities if a certain Party is in the White House at the time. Of course actual space weather damage would only about 5 percent of the final stimulus appropriation but 90 percent of the sales job to get authorization. Think Shovel Ready.
But but… the IPCC assures us that the sun has no effect on the planet to the point that humans overwhelm any other influences combined.
Rob, I think you should read the reports. The incident solar radiation is not ignored but is absolutely fundamental to all IPCC conclusions. Nobody assures us that the sun has no effect on the planet.
My read was Rob is sarcastically referring to solar activity other than vanilla sunshine.
Apart from the EU itself, of course 🙂
And the euro!
And don’t forget that the euro was tried before in the previous century, and failed for the same reasons it will fail this time. Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.
Could a Carrington+ event be the “executioner of the bourgeois” that the greens are hoping will save the planet?
Of course, this means we are doomed.
Another crisis invented to instigate fear that will be assuaged by trusting the perpetrator to solve it. Just give them your freedom and money and all will be good again.
A real threat is Earth-crossing asteroids. Yet precious little has been done to prepare for that sure and certain danger, which preparation would cost a tiny fraction of the trillions squandered on CACA and “Green” energy projects and lives lost thereby.
So in Europe they are worried about the electrical grid! Gore Blimey! When did they ever give it a thought? I wager it will give up the ghost before the sun has a chance to give it a coup de grace. Now they are looking for ways to boiler plate their puny grid against a star they never paid any attention to before. Now instead of having to protect a few dozens of dynamos, they have to protect a million of them along with the lines. Methinks they want to blame the idiocy of the results of the disastrous carbon dioxide avoidance policy on the sun.
My thoughts on the outcome 1) Europe isn’t designed to solve this or any other problem. They’re into a new world order run by plutocrats 2) In our new fearful world, the problem by definition is greatly overblown.
“So in Europe they are worried about the electrical grid! Gore Blimey! When did they ever give it a thought?”
Isn’t that the truth!
The thing most dangerous to the EU electrical grid isn’t a Carrington-type event, but their own energy policies! They need to look a little closer to home for the vulnerabilities in their electrical grid.
I’ve been interested in space weather since in my early involvement in studies and experiments on the effects of the electro-magnetic radiation pulse generated by exo-atmospheric detonation of nuclear weapons in he 1970s. The Soviets at that time had a built-in advantage arising from their older technology – especially thermionic valves. Spacecraft have always had to be engineered to withstand the environment in space and have managed to do so, thus enabling and facilitating the growth of electronic communications. So the problem is not new.
However, having anything done under the auspices of the EU is likely to be disastrous. It is an appalling institution of unaccountable government seeking power and other people’s money on any and every pretext. There is much to be said for international collaboration on a voluntary basis where executive governments and their agencies are required strictly and openly to account for their expenditure of other people’s money to those very same people. That is simply not the case with the EU.
So let’s have international collaboration but, please, not managed by the EU – anything would be better.
I think one might rightly substitute ‘UN’ for ‘EU’ in your comment, Peter.
“And” is such a useful word.
School pupil in Sheffield England finds error in NASA satellite climate radiation data:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39355424
Oh! Boy! another Fake Science Project that will save the world!
I think, I will start a foundation to make April 1st “Carrington Event Prevention Day”.
Please send Money to : Recently Retired Government Climate Workers.
Dennis…It is exceedingly disappointing to read some of the comments (such as yours) who so nonchalantly dismiss everything that you don’t fully understand. These types of posts are the ones our critics will use against us in our battle to be taken seriously by the Joe Public in the debate over truthful CAGW deliberations that will now get a chance to be heard. If we just come across as ignorant then we are just shooting ourselves in the foot. Makes me want to ask for a bit better moderation on some of these posts. Unless in case you are just being sarcactic, in which case you should say so.
No I am not being SARCACTIC . I was just being SARCASTIC ! (Smiley face goes here)
Dennis
Unlike Ron, I think I understood your sarcasm.
If we’re going to mandate the “/sarc” tag, there ought to be a “/pedantic” tag as well.
Geeeez!
One should first assume you are reading sarcasm before getting too upset about the words. There’s a lot to be sarcastic about, when it comes to climate change.
We shouldn’t mandate the sarc/ tag, and most spelling mistakes are typing/proofreading mistakes, not a failure to understand the language, so we should lighten up on the spelling criticisms.