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Did people realize we're just one big solar storm away from a huge global catastrophe because of the way power grids, solar storms and nuclear power plants interact?
We almost learned this lesson the hard way on July 23, 2012
Here is an excerpt from a NASA article on the issue:QuoteA similar storm today could have a catastrophic effect. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers damaged by such a storm might take years to repair.
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"In my view the July 2012 storm was in all respects at least as strong as the 1859 Carrington event," says Baker. "The only difference is, it missed."
In February 2014, physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc. published a paper in Space Weather entitled "On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events." In it, he analyzed records of solar storms going back 50+ years. By extrapolating the frequency of ordinary storms to the extreme, he calculated the odds that a Carrington-class storm would hit Earth in the next ten years.
The answer: 12%.
"Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct," says Riley. "It is a sobering figure."
In his study, Riley looked carefully at a parameter called Dst, short for "disturbance – storm time." This is a number calculated from magnetometer readings around the equator. Essentially, it measures how hard Earth's magnetic field shakes when a CME hits. The more negative Dst becomes, the worse the storm. Ordinary geomagnetic storms, which produce Northern Lights around the Arctic Circle, but otherwise do no harm, register Dst=-50 nT (nanoTesla). The worst geomagnetic storm of the Space Age, which knocked out power across Quebec in March 1989, registered Dst=-600 nT. Modern estimates of Dst for the Carrington Event itself range from -800 nT to a staggering -1750 nT.
In their Dec. 2013 paper, Baker et al. estimated Dst for the July 2012 storm. "If that CME had hit Earth, the resulting geomagnetic storm would have registered a Dst of -1200, comparable to the Carrington Event and twice as bad as the March 1989 Quebec blackout."
The reason researchers know so much about the July 2012 storm is because, out of all the spacecraft in the solar system it could have hit, it did hit a solar observatory. STEREO-A is almost ideally equipped to measure the parameters of such an event.
"The rich data set obtained by STEREO far exceeded the relatively meagre observations that Carrington was able to make in the 19th century," notes Riley. "Thanks to STEREO-A we know a lot of about the magnetic structure of the CME, the kind of shock waves and energetic particles it produced, and perhaps most importantly of all, the number of CMEs that preceded it."
It turns out that the active region responsible for producing the July 2012 storm didn't launch just one CME into space, but many. Some of those CMEs "plowed the road" for the superstorm.
A paperin the March 2014 edition of Nature Communications by UC Berkeley space physicist Janet G. Luhmann and former postdoc Ying D. Liu describes the process: The July 23rd CME was actually two CMEs separated by only 10 to 15 minutes. This double-CME traveled through a region of space that had been cleared out by yet another CME four days earlier. As a result, the storm clouds were not decelerated as much as usual by their transit through the interplanetary medium.
"It's likely that the Carrington event was also associated with multiple eruptions, and this may turn out to be a key requirement for extreme events," notes Riley. "In fact, it seems that extreme events may require an ideal combination of a number of key features to produce the 'perfect solar storm.'"
"Pre-conditioning by multiple CMEs appears to be very important," agrees Baker.
A common question about this event is, how did the STEREO-A probe survive? After all, Carrington-class storms are supposed to be mortally dangerous to spacecraft and satellites. Yet STEREO-A not only rode out the storm, but also continued taking high-quality data throughout.
"Spacecraft such as the STEREO twins and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (a joint ESA/NASA mission) were designed to operate in the environment outside the Earth's magnetosphere, and that includes even quite intense, CME-related shocks," says Joe Gurman, the STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "To my knowledge, nothing serious happened to the spacecraft."
The story might have been different, he says, if STEREO-A were orbiting Earth instead of traveling through interplanetary space.
"Inside Earth's magnetosphere, strong electric currents can be generated by a CME strike," he explains. "Out in interplanetary space, however, the ambient magnetic field is much weaker and so those dangerous currents are missing." In short, STEREO-A was in a good place to ride out the storm.
"Without the kind of coverage afforded by the STEREO mission, we as a society might have been blissfully ignorant of this remarkable solar storm," notes Baker. "How many others of this scale have just happened to miss Earth and our space detection systems? This is a pressing question that needs answers."
If Riley's work holds true, there is a 12% chance we will learn a lot more about extreme solar storms in the next 10 years—when one actually strikes Earth.
Says Baker, "we need to be prepared."
This problem - could be caused by a solar flare (a Coronal Mass Ejection) causing an electromagnetic pulse, leading to transformer loss - then knocking out the energy grid and then that causing multiple concurrent nuclear meltdowns- a situation which is not hypothetical, unfortunately..as the last part is what happened at Fukushima, to three reactors, all at the same time, when they lost power for cooling, and it was not able to be restored in time.
It is called "loss of the ultimate heatsink" and the most recent casualties are those three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi power plant I in Japan.
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12507/severe-space-weather-events-understanding-societal-and-economic-impacts-a
and we can only guess at how frequently such storms- which could cause a global power failure, occur.. However, the Stereo A mission's findings, that there was such a CME in 2012- should raise red flags. Its exactly like the game of Russian Roulette, except the gun is the Sun and the Earth is vulnerable because of our nuclear power plants and grid design.
(A man-detonated nuclear device set off in space, would also cause the same problem, but in a more limited space.)
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/21jan_severespaceweather
A nuclear bomb detonating in space could do it too..
but only to countries with lots of power lines and especially nuclear power plants..
How frequently do Carrington class CMEs occur? More frequently than we thought until recently when the data from a 2012 event was analyzed - showing that the CME on July 23rd was strong enough to have caused damage to our energy grid. We literally dodged a bullet.
https://www.networkworld.com/article/3130650/security/president-obama-targets-nasty-space-weather-response-with-executive-order.html
https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/10/13/2125249/president-obama-orders-government-to-plan-for-space-weather?sdsrc=rel
For this reason we need to transition to a different system. Maybe one based on DC, and store and forward/bucket brigade technologies..
http://www.businessinsider.com/solar-storm-effects-electronics-energy-grid-2016-3
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/finalBoulderPresentation042611%20%281%29.pdf
Other accidents could cause similar problems, like a downstream dam failure, leaving a nuclear power plant high and dry.
The fact that several reactors failed at Fukushima side by side means that this kind of disaster is inherent to the kinds of reactors used today and virtually unavoidable if not prepared for.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx
https://www.nap.edu/read/21874/chapter/5
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/AdditionalVolumes/P1710/Pub1710-TV1-Web.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011SW000734/full
http://fukushima.ans.org/report/accident-analysis
What would be a more resilient energy grid? Can we think of a good solution, before its too late?
Other resources can be found now at:
http://sworm.gov/publications.htm
2017 Documents
Power Outage Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans : Managing the Cascading Impacts from a Long-Term Power Outage
2016 Documents
Executive Order -- Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events
SWORM Subcommittee Charter
2015 Documents
National Space Weather Strategy
Space Weather Action Plan
OSTP Fact Sheet: New Actions to Enhance National Space-Weather Preparedness
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Another classic cdev post
Did people realize we're just one big solar storm away from a huge global catastrophe because of the way power grids, solar storms and nuclear power plants interact?
The problem caused by power loss knocking out the energy grid and causing nuclear meltdowns is not hypothetical, unfortunately..
It is called "loss of the ultimate heatsink" and the most recent casualties are the three reactors in the fukushima 1 power plant in Japan.
Tsunamis aside, the control rods can be dropped in seconds. As long as the coolant pump's backup generators aren't washed away by the tsunami, a solar storm is not going to cause nuclear meltdowns, or at least that connection is ridiculously tangential at best. Ridiculously sensationalistic. -
Another link on the solar storm danger to the grid..
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/finalBoulderPresentation042611%20%281%29.pdf
EU Contamination map:
http://www.unscear.org/docs/JfigXI.pdf
(Speaking of optimism bias
What about small scale nuclear fusion?
I find this interesting - although its still a long way from being a net producer of energy.
One group of researchers looking at this possibility are based at the University of Sydney.
Some of their papers are listed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confinement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell#University_of_Sydney -
In the same vein - the risk of a high altitude EMP being deployed to take out a country's power grid is very real. Countries like N. Korea do not need accurate or numerous ICBMs to devastate another country.
Lest you think I am being alarmist, Harald Malmgren, who I follow on twitter, has recently discussed this underappreciated risk extensively. He served as advisor to president Kennedy when this risk (via USSR) was taken seriously, and believes that it is the real deterrent N.Korea possesses. -
That's exactly what I was getting at too. (N. Korea)
Until we transition away from the grid setup we have now we'll be vulnerable to both that and solar storms.
So, doubles the risk.
Also, just in the last few years, due to the findings from that mission, they now estimate the risk of solar storms to be much higher than they did before Stereo A mission's findings.
Its a stroke of luck that it was there when it happened. So we can't claim that we didn't have a warning, we did. For all we know they are common and the fact that we have not had a major CME hit us since 1859 is an anomaly. I think we would be wise to assume that.
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@rs20,
Here is the problem, all the assumptions you just made about backup generators, etc. would likely apply if just one isolated incident was occurring, For example, they assume a short interruption in power. But what if this larger event was the cause which had most seriously impacted electrical equipment of all kinds, all around the world, (or nation)
When multiple systems are interrelated we have a much worse potential situation.
Each power station needs to have multiple redundant systems that can stand alone for extended periods of time, long enough not only to bring the reactor offline , enough to make it safely able to exist in an uncertain situation, ideally even a passively cooled state indefinitely.
Ideally power for cooling should somehow be made independent of maintenance. Because people may flee. Also, there will likely be other demands on any working power generation systems. How do they say no?
Because the whole world could be in a state of crisis from a single direct hit by a solar storm, not just one reactor. -
The world needs more autarky, we've become too interconnected. Local grids need to be able to be isolated and rebooted ... maybe have a per local grid emergency isolation/reboot test day a year, so you know it will actually work. Then all the hospitals etc can test their emergency generators, instead of putting that shit off indefinitely.
On an unrelated note, I think any nation should also have an emergency plan to feed the population in absence of foreign inputs (so basically move a huge part of the population to the country side and do farming with manual labour again, also need to recycle human waste for fertilizer of course). If the country is too overpopulated to achieve it, then it's too overpopulated.
We're heading to a mass die off when global distribution fails. -
For a semi-realistic fictional account of what would happen after a large EMP attack or Carrington event - read the novel One Second After
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You can think of autarky as the potential for autonomy, usually at the national level.
The term fell out of favour after WW2, when interconnection was seen as the cure for all the world's problems. I think we're going a bit overboard. -
There is a perception that democracy is too dangerous because of the imminent shift to automation and the liberalisation plans. For example, in the EU, the Services Directive basically implements the WTO GATS plan to shift services to commercial operations, then globalize them. That eliminates moral hazard for governments.
If they had democracy they could just vote to end all that. And they would. Same in the US. So since 1995 its been off the table.
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Did you realize this (countries defying the trading system to provide food to their poor people) is a big controversy in the WTO right now?
Article X.1 of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), states in part that there “shall be multilateral negotiations on the question of emergency safeguard measures based on the principle of non-discrimination”
which bypass the rules in an emergency as long as they don't violate the aim of the agreements, (but it seems that would).
I don't know.
A lot would hinge on whether they reduced the profit of sellers of those products and banks and financial institutions, which have a "legitimate expectation" of windfall profits (from foreclosures, etc. as the society falls apart).
If that is the entire reason why foreign financial institutions would be investing here, expecting to make a killing, based on correct predictions, it would likely be impermissible to stop it.
I can hear them now. "If you did that, the whole system would fall apart".On an unrelated note, I think any nation should also have an emergency plan to feed the population in absence of foreign inputs
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probably even off-grid solar power, is not going to do you any good.
Do you have calculations for this? -
The 2010 film "the Road" contains a terrifyingly realistic depiction of something similar.. a huge catastrophe of some kind..
Its the scariest move Ive seen during my adult life. -
I wonder if a HVDC grid would care much. No transformer to saturate and the voltages induced don't seem that high.
Free power at best, extra load at worst? -
The 2010 film "the Road" contains a terrifyingly realistic depiction of something similar.. a huge catastrophe of some kind..
Its the scariest move Ive seen during my adult life.
Aah, so you've not seen 'Threads' yet then? .... ...
Low budget, made-for-tv film from 1984 depicting the outbreak of nuclear war.
https://vimeo.com/channels/1055902 -
No, I haven't. Nuclear war is extremely scary because they totally underestimated the destruction. Its much worse than we are led to believe.
(a solar storm followed by a multitude of nuclear plant meltdowns would be similar but slightly different than nuclear war. Cities would not all be burned as in a nuclear war, most (almost all, likely) of humanity would survive the initial set of events however as power and electronic infratructure would be subject to massive failure - operations which depended on it would fail, in the case of nuclear power plants, catastrophically. If that happened, millions would likely eventually die from radiation sickness, and billions from starvation due to lack of edible food, and its high costs. Cancers and crippling levels of inflammation would make the survivors lives shorter and/or painful because of biological changes, for example, cells cannot repair themselves due to inhibition of protein synthesis. Radiation causes innumerable health problems, including neurological problems and systemic inflammation similar to those experienced by people in chemotherapy i.e. "chemo brain" or who have undergone whole brain irradiation. (Survivors of hurricane Katrina and Sandy also had a similar issue "Katrina Brain, which was caused by heavy exposure to toxic mold which contains mycotoxins which are similar to radiation and chemotherapy in terms of the damage they do to the body and fast growing cells in the brain.)
The aftermath of a planetary post solar storm scenario could be so difficult that problems would be unsolvable and a substantial percentage of humanity would die off. The largest numbers of deaths would again be among those who were unable to win in the struggle for food. its also quite possible wars would ensue for any remaining plots of arable land that were not contaminated, if any existed. (maybe places like the dryer side of New Zealand (fallout of many products of distant nuclear accidents are highest where there is the most rain) or South Africa would be less irradiated - so still habitable, at least for a while at the beginning, remember that many of the meltdowns would likely continue for a long time without human intervention in areas that had been abandoned, or where the local population, including those deemed responsible for cleaning up the "accident" or accidents had fled or at that point, been killed by the exposure.)
The world cannot afford thse kinds of events as they can potentially make large parts of the globe uninhabitable.
If that occurred, the cost of fixing things would be beyond the capability of humanity to solve.
Any governments from before the war left after this would be faced with an unsolvable set of problems and almost certainly any survivors of the original combatants would be blamed for the huge losses.
I think a good case can be made for nuclear war being so unwinnable and so likely to result in the world's destruction, that it itself must be a crime, even in self defense. I think that given these risks, a similar argument might be makeable for nuclear fission if society does not make adjustments that make corporations more accoutable for the costs of cleanup. It seems that their irresponsibility will almost certainly result in the cost being dumped in the lap of nations and peoples already stripped of all potentially income producing assets by neoliberalism (i.e. privatization.)
This is one of the problems of our age, another being that the sacrifices of society which are being demanded by "global capital" are larger than any possible gains at this point because its impossible for businesses to deliver the huge returns allegedly being demanded by this "highly mobile global capital" without shedding the current middle class and awarding their jobs to a new group, basically to pay them off for their help in subjugating the rest of the world.
Rather than dump things like the so called "multilateral system" that are of questionable value, they propose to engage in a race to the bottom, consuming the middle class in developed nations on the way (but not creating one in the developing world, either.) Also they want to totally destroy the environment to create new means of rent extraction with pollution.
So, back to nuclear war.. if anybody survived, they- profits would not be pouring in as they would like to think. Quite the opposite, we would "devolve", in the aftermath. Even in a small nuclear war 2 billion would die, basically the world's children and those over the age at which one can defend oneself from predators intent on eating you, because the cost of food would rise above almost everybody's ability to pay.
Also, chronic exposure to radiation creates children with tiny brains. Those born in that environments would be crippled with a multitude of health problems, and many would be stillborn or die shortly after birth. We would lose all our children and old people.
Additionally cannibalism could become common as society breaks down under such conditions. People become prey valuable to others as food.
Not a world that anybody alive now would be comfortable with.
A nuclear war would quickly escalate and in a worst case scenario, significant amounts of atmosphere could be propelled outside of the gravitational pull of Earth. We might lose our oxygen and water.
Most species on earth would die off. Its possible that all eukarotic life would be heavily impacted.
Only the simplest life forms would survive. -
Rather than dump things like the so called "multilateral system" that are of questionable value, they propose to engage in a race to the bottom, consuming the middle class in developed nations on the way (but not creating one in the developing world, either.) Also they want to totally destroy the environment to create new means of rent extraction with pollution.
OK. Who is "THEY". Name them.
Also, I suggest to look for professional help. -
Sure..
This is from 2011 but it will have to do:
http://www.levyinstitute.org/conferences/minsky2011/presentations/Wallach.pdf
Also, see web sites like that of the WTO, OECD, World Bank, G20 and so on.
The people who run the planet for the corporations now. The people who really regulate the phony regulators.
Anyway, lets stop talking about this. I've supplied your proof.
What I think would be the most productive is discussing alternative methods of power generation and especially distribution which would be immune to the EMP problem. So either more decentralized (smaller distances the power has to travel) or some kind of store and forward system..
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Sure..
Unintelligible. Doesn't have a complete sentence in it. Most of the HBRs say nothing to non conspiracy theorist nutters.
This is from 2011 but it will have to do:
http://www.levyinstitute.org/conferences/minsky2011/presentations/Wallach.pdfThe people who run the planet for the corporations now.
Like who?
You say that "they" want all of us dead, because north korea blows up an EMP, which kills everyone, but them, so they gain more power. That is a pretty stupid plan. -
You're confusing mtdoc's book with me.
Nobody I know of "wants all of us dead" either, as long as we have money.
The world that is being pushed on us is one where money is everything.
Where there are no "human rights", only corporate rights.
Anyway, sorry to have been / be so blunt. -
There is no real need for a new grid, just because of those rare magnetic storms. They are a problem mainly in large area grids with long lines - so something like the US, Kanada and Russia. Korea is likely already to small to have a problem.
Normally the transformer should be protected from a major damage - there are fuses to blow before the transformer does. However these are not always sufficient, but likely most of the time. So it would not be all transformers down, but only a few percent of the ones that sit at long lines, and quite a lot of blown fuses. Still the grid would be down and it could take some time to restore the fuses and to bring up something like 98% of the grid that is still intact (some of the blown transformers are spare anyway).
For the nuclear power station the EMP would not be much more than a more or less normal loss of grid - so nothing serious. More like something seen in the US about once or twice a year for other reasons like a winter storm or wildfire.
To prepare for such an event they might have to do a few more exercises on how to restore the grid from a total stop - this alone could be a problem in Europe, because it has not happened before. Some of the renewable power installations are also supposed to be a little tricky on a restart. Because there are so many with automatic control. The other point is that they might have to check the fuses and maybe upgrade a few, so that less transformers will blow. -
Threads like this remind me a lot of the occasional emails I used to get from a former friend when he was high on meth. They would be long rambling "research" papers on scientific or medical topics which used a lot of words without really saying much.
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DC systems might well be at greater risk due to having very long continuous segments. This kind of thing tends to induce very low frequency currents into long conductors. The problem was first met with telegraph systems in the Wild West.
"If you think the climate and atmospheric researchers have a hard time being taken seriously by the bureaucracy, don't even think about asking a plasma physicist about advocating for geomagnetic storm shielding on Earth. You'll be laughed out of the room."
No, I think there have been enough solar storm effects that the average bureaucrat acknowledges their existence, also that there is no subsidy scam involved. And, no auroragate, with threats to delete data requested under FOI. Or claims of Northern Lights causing a 30km sea level rise. (but only on some parts of the sea..)
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Some of the effects described for the 1859 Carrington event on long telegraph lines sound as if - if they happened today they would cause problems on just about any long conductor. Some parts of the US are particularly suseptible because of the ground- (or lack of a good ground, is more like it).
Anyway, they are working on a plan for power utilities that depends on getting a warning of an impending solar storm from satellites permanently parked at the Lagrangian points. This warning might not be as long- not by a long shot- as the ones they seem to be describing we would have. (because of a sort of pre-seeding effect- need to find a good link for that to post here)
This is a good article about the DSCOVR mission- the first space probe intended to act as a sentinel- monitoring the space between the US and the Sun..
Also: https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/early-warning-system-solar-flares
Regardless of how well it works, this is an issue we all have a stake in so I think that all countries should be brought into this system and given a system - a communications line that is not going to be knocked out- however that might be done- to deliver this warning and maybe given assistance in trying to reduce the effects of this solar EMP.
That's particularly important.DC systems might well be at greater risk due to having very long continuous segments. This kind of thing tends to induce very low frequency currents into long conductors. The problem was first met with telegraph systems in the Wild West.
"If you think the climate and atmospheric researchers have a hard time being taken seriously by the bureaucracy, don't even think about asking a plasma physicist about advocating for geomagnetic storm shielding on Earth. You'll be laughed out of the room."
No, I think there have been enough solar storm effects that the average bureaucrat acknowledges their existence, also that there is no subsidy scam involved. And, no auroragate, with threats to delete data requested under FOI. Or claims of Northern Lights causing a 30km sea level rise. (but only on some parts of the sea..) -
You're confusing mtdoc's book with me.
Nobody I know of "wants all of us dead" either, as long as we have money.
The world that is being pushed on us is one where money is everything.
Where there are no "human rights", only corporate rights.
Anyway, sorry to have been / be so blunt.
To be clear - I only referenced this book which is a fictional account of what might happen if an EMP attack occurred on the US. However, even though it is fiction (and at times written in a pretty cheesy fashion) the underlying premise is well researched and sound. And no one ever has said that some conspiratorial group "wants us all dead"
This is not some crazy "conspiracy theory" or "doomsday prepper" concocted nonsense. There was, until recently a US Congressional commission on this issue and as I stated earlier, there has been serious thought given to this at the highest levels of government dating back to the Kennedy administration.
This is a very real threat (whether human caused EMP device or natural Carrington event). One or the other will eventually happen (hopefully not in my lifetime). The only question is will the impacted society(s) be prepared for it?
The problem is, and some of the responses from forum members here illustrate this perfectly, is that human nature being what it is, most people do not want to think about such things. Even informed politicians or engineers who can grock the technical implications would rather live in a state of cognitive dissonance and go about their daily business without exerting the effort (mental or otherwise) to address the issue.
To use a USA centric analogy, we all tend to want to live like the flock of farm raised turkey's, expecting tomorrow to be just like the day before - with food shelter and safety - unaware (or ignoring) of the approach of the third Thursday in November. -
DC systems might well be at greater risk due to having very long continuous segments. This kind of thing tends to induce very low frequency currents into long conductors.
Without a reverse path it builds voltage, since it indeed is very low frequency. A transformer has no impedance to fight the current so an AC distribution network just becomes a giant set of electrical loops, the DC-DC converters only let through as much current as the controller wants before it breaks down. So as long as the storm can't build enough voltage to overcome the safety limits of the converters it just adds or subtracts from the load AFAICS.QuoteThe problem was first met with telegraph systems in the Wild West.
A morse key has a slightly lower break down voltage than a HVDC converter.