British Government Prepares For Solar Storms

judgecorp writes "The British Government has announced its plans to handle solar storms. The idea is to improve the resilience of infrastructure, including satellite communications — which the government says will also be useful against the future possibility of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. From the report: 'National Grid and DECC are building on the work of the Space Environment Impacts Evaluation Group and E3C to analyse the range of impacts of extreme space weather events, with the Carrington Event being adopted as the reasonable worst case. These scientific assessments have enabled National Grid to change the design requirements for its Supergrid transformers, and to increase its reserve holding of transformers. National Grid is currently developing improved monitoring tools with the British Geological Survey (BGS) and installing or reinstalling Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC) monitoring devices into its Strategic Asset Management program. The next steps will be for National Grid, in association with BGS and working with E3C, to develop more detailed modelling of severe space weather events including impacts on generator transformers. This will extend and strengthen its analysis on the electricity transmission system completed so far.'"

Comments

Re:Paranoid Wankers

[vlm]

Guys, nobody has these weapons and if they did they wouldn't waste them on you.

Govt is probably worried about an inside job. Their govt loves their Orwellian CCTV cams. Theres a website who's name I forget of pictures of torched and destroyed UK CCTV cameras. Eventually there comes a point where the best way for the citizens (err I mean human property of the govt) to clear the verminous CCTV cams out of an area is a short range EMP weapon... Combine that with 50% youth unemployment in greater europe, racial tensions, its going to be an exciting time.

Across the pond, in a more civilized fashion, we aren't as crazy about cams and we'd just use hunting rifles to take them out anyway instead of quenching a big superconducting magnet. Also apparently no one has found a way for the 1% to get richer by EMP hardening, or a way to make the 99% poorer by EMP hardening. another reason we are never going to do it. So those are the numerous reasons Big Brother UK is doing this but not Big Brother US.