EPRI April 2019 Final Report – High-Altitude EMP & the Bulk Power System

http://highfrontier.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-04-29-EPRI-Report.pdf

We thank Ambassador Hank Cooper for including this EPRI FULL REPORT and for his tireless efforts and accomplishments for this noble cause.

EPRI states:

the EPRI report concludes, “research findings do not support the notion of blackouts encompassing the contiguous United States (CONUS) and lasting for many months to years.”The results of the assessments indicated that E3 EMP alone could result in a regional blackout encompassing multiple states, but immediate, widespread transformer damage due to hotspot heating from part-cycle saturation is not expected to occur. Page 7-3

 EDTF concludes that the methodology and findings of the EPRI report are inconsistent with the 60+ years of DOD research and experience in understanding EMP environments, system effects, and protection requirements and that the report dangerously and inadequately characterizes impacts on the US electric grid for an EMP event.”

FREE BEACON NEWS ARTICLE:

General: America’s Power Grid Vulnerable to Electronic Attack
Government, military, industry huddle to address growing EMP, other electronic threats

Bill Gertz – MAY 3, 2019 5:00 AM

EXCERPTS from article

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) report stated that simulations of a 25 kiloton nuclear blast in near-earth space or the upper atmosphere would spread an EMP over an area of 3 million square miles.
The report, however, appeared to minimize the danger of EMP on the electric grid by concluding between 5 percent and 15 percent of digital relays used to control power transmission would be disrupted or damaged by the main burst called an E1 EMP.
“E1 EMP impacts alone were not found to cause immediate, interconnection-scale disruption or blackout of the power grid, but this finding is not conclusive due to uncertainties regarding how damaged [digital protective relays] might respond during an actual event, or how potential E1 EMP damage to generator controls and other systems such as automatic generation control (AGC), not included as a part of this study, might affect the long-term operation of the grid,” the report said.
The report was criticized by some grid security advocates as “junk science” designed to oppose what the electric industry has said would be an expensive hardening of the electric grid.
“EPRI’s EMP report is obviously a last-ditch effort to derail the recent White House executive order on coordinating national resilience to electromagnetic pulses that would fast-track protecting the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures from EMP threats,” said Peter Pry, an EMP expert who took part in a congressional commission on EMP threats.
The report is “not a scientifically legitimate alternative view on the EMP threat, is authored by non-experts who make false claims, and should be accorded no more credibility than the ‘independent laboratory analyses’ funded by the cigarette industry in the 1950s falsely claiming there is no causal link between smoking and lung cancer,” Pry added.
Contrary to the industry-funded study, the Air Force report included a chart showing that a nuclear detonation over the United States would cause a catastrophic power outage affecting an estimated 318 million people for 30 days.”
On the EPRI report, Kwast said the Air Force welcomed the study but will “put under the scrutiny of the scientific method with engineers and scientists that have no potential advantage on the outcome and then we’ll bring that evidence out.”
The Air Force will produce a report on the conference within 60 days (INCLUDED IN BLOG) that will be presented to Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other leaders.
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