NASA has warned imminent cyclical solar storms may take out power to large parts of the centralized electrical grid causing blackouts than can last for months. One thing we have learned from the crisis in Japan is that nuclear reactor cooling systems require power to function before fuel rods overheat. US nuclear facilities, all 104 of them, have only eight hours of backup time available to them before we see multiple repeats of the Fukushima disaster.

It’s a nightmarish scenario: a days-long blackout at a nuclear power plant leading to a radiation leak. Though the odds of that happening are remote, an Associated Press investigation has found that the risk does exist at U.S. nuclear plants.

Long before Japan’s nuclear crisis, regulators knew that a power failure lasting for days at a U.S. nuclear plant could lead to a radioactive leak. But they have only required the nation’s 104 reactors to develop plans for dealing with blackouts of four or eight hours, assuming that power can be quickly restored.

In one simulation presented by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2009, it would take less than a day for radiation to escape from a reactor at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant if an earthquake, flood or fire knocked out electrical power and there was no way to keep the reactors cool after backup battery power ran out. That plant, the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station outside Lancaster, has reactors of the same make and model as those releasing radiation at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

We have covered the failings of centralized power before but if the NASA study proves to be correct and we don’t have these plants in a cool down period, this could be a very serious event.

The centralized grid system is built upon antiquated 19th century technology and aging transformers are very vulnerable to anticipated cyclic solar storms. One of the consequences of the central grid is that failures are known to cascade and take out massive sections cutting power to millions. A decentralized or distributed power system would weather a solar storm much better.
The sun’s eleven year cycle of heightened electrical activity is beginning and articles abound across the net about catastrophic consequences with massive power outages globally.

Those 2012 doomsday predictions are starting to look more realistic.