May 7, 2019—An Erroneous EPRI EMP Report!

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) presents a substantial obstacle, at least for the uninformed, to urgently needed protection of the electric power grid from an all too real existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat.

Last week, I attended an important Electromagnetic Defense Task Force (EDTF) conference on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama — the home of Air University, a key component of the Air Force Education and Training Command, which is commanded by USAF Lt. General Steven Kwast, who is committed to addressing this critically important threat.

An important but unhelpful intrusion on the opening day of that three-day useful conference was the release of an EPRI report that seriously low-balled the impact of an EMP attack, which as our readers know is an existential threat to all Americans. This event was covered by an informative report by Bill Gertz, reported in full below:

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General: America’s Power Grid Vulnerable to Electronic Attack

Government, military, industry huddle to address growing EMP, other electronic threats

BY: Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon, May 3, 2019, https://freebeacon.com/national-security/general-americas-power-grid-vulnerable-to-electronic-attack/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=81aa6ff639-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_02_09_36_COPY_187&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-81aa6ff639-46284985

A senior Air Force general is warning that America’s electrical power grid is vulnerable to electronic attacks ranging from nuclear-produced electromagnetic pulse, to tactical electronic weapons from China or Russia, to geomagnetic storms—all of which can plunge the nation into darkness.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast, commander of the Air Education and Training Command in San Antonio, Texas, issued the warning in a telephone interview during a conference earlier this week that brought together experts to find ways to protect against what the military is calling the electromagnetic spectrum, or EMS, threat.

“The American people need to understand that we built western civilization on electricity and information,” Kwast said. “Whether it’s our 4G LTE and our cell phones, or whether it’s our energy grid, electricity and information are the magic sauce for economic development, economic growth, and the vibrancy of our economy.”

The infrastructure to support electrical power and information transmission were built without consideration of electronic or other types of attacks, he said.

“But we see evidence of China and Russia looking at that as a vulnerability in American society and we have to be mindful of that,” the three-star general said.

Kwast was among some 300 experts who took part in an Air Force-hosted summit on electromagnetic spectrum threats at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama that ended Wednesday. The conference participants included some of the nation’s most experienced government and private sector specialists on electronic threats, as well as international experts.

The conference was part of the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force that is aligned with President Trump’s directive announced last month aimed at strengthening the nation against electromagnetic attacks or events.

As the conference was meeting, an electric power industry lobbying group published a report based on what it said was a three-year investigation of EMP. The report sought to minimize the potential impact of electromagnetic pulse attacks and solar flares.

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.

The United States’ three main electric power grids—in the east, west, and Texas—are vital to the functioning of American society and represent the most critical of the 16 critical infrastructures to be protected.

Kwast said the military has been seeking to harden its facilities and bases from electronic attacks but that more needs to be done.

“What we’re doing is really digging into the technology and problem of the fact that we never really designed our energy grids and to potential adversaries that might want to weaponized the electromagnetic spectrum,” Kwast said of this week’s conference.

“Even though it may be resilient to lightning strikes it is not resilient to some of the other techniques.”

A nuclear detonation in space is not the only danger.

“I know people get stuck in this mindset that it has to be a nuclear detonation in space to create this,” Kwast said. “That’s just not true. Our knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum is becoming so sophisticated that we know that our adversaries can design tactical electromagnetic weapons that can target very tactical and specific things.”

Electronic attacks can be “as simple as you zapping somebody’s computer, or a base, or a local area.” The advanced arms can also be a “very discriminating weapon that has no attribution, meaning you wouldn’t know who did it. So that’s a concern,” Kwast added.

During this week’s conferences several table-top war games and red-teaming exercises were held to assess the vulnerabilities and help identify solutions.

Much of the exercises are secret. “I would tell you that we are discovering strategies to take this vulnerability away and make sure our potential competition cannot use it as a weapon against America,” Kwast said.

The electronic threat to command and control and other vital systems was outlined in a task force report last year that concluded “multiple adversaries are capable of executing a strategic attack that may black out major portions of a state’s grid.”

High-technology electronic strikes could impact the communications systems of most U.S. military installations simultaneously.

“In terms of strategy, from an adversary’s standpoint, military installations represent the vulnerable underbelly of the defense enterprise,” the report said. “In particular, if deliberate or natural EMS phenomena affect an installation’s command post, the capabilities of associated forces may be degraded or stopped.”

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.”

Nuclear power stations also are vulnerable to blackout causing EMP that could produce meltdowns and the release of radioactive material if electricity used to maintain cooling systems is disrupted for long periods. Most nuclear power plants are limited to around 16 hours of battery backup power.

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 that will be presented to Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other leaders.

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In addition, several of us took time out to quickly review and respond to the EPRI report — in a press conference arranged by Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy’s Secure the Grid Coalition, as provided in two approximately 30-minute videos: Click here for the first of comments by several informed NDTF participants, and click here for the follow-up Question and Answer period.

Click here for my April 2^nd message that underwrites many of my claims at that Press Conference and in the NDTF conference. Both reflect the importance of President Trump’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order on Electromagnetic Pulses — a link to which is provided in my April 2^nd message.

The White House National Security Council staff has an enormously important role to assure a “whole of government” response to this Executive Order to counter the threat. They must contend with several realities of the DC Swamp:

The Department of Energy (DOE) — and its predecessor Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) — was historically most interested in designing, testing and building nuclear weapons and not in understanding their effects or how to protect against them. That task was assigned to the Defense Department, and particularly to the predecessor organizations of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) — beginning in the early 1960s with the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) that morphed into the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), which abandoned its leadership role in the early 1990s with the alleged end of the Cold War, and eventually morphed into the DTRA.
Now, there are very few remaining experts from that era, leading former DNA Director Retired VADM Robert Monroe to advocate a return to that capability, including the needed nuclear testing to guide the educational process — as well as to design and test a modern nuclear arsenal and train a new cadre of nuclear weapons effects experts. Click here for one of his recent articles that reviews past history pertinent to EMP matters. His proposals could end this vacuum into which are entering unproven charlatan “experts” like those who provided the EPRI Report.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has long had a “whole of government” responsibility, but has thus far placed the priority on dealing with the existential EMP threat near the bottom of their list of threats to which they are supposed to respond. DHS leaders have shown little serious interest in applying our known expertise, learned and still applied to protect our most important military systems, to protect our electric power grid.

For my part, I welcome everyone becoming aware of this threat and how to counter it. But the President’s Executive Order contains numerous recipes for months and even years of delays fostered by additional studies to relearn lessons mastered a half century ago by Department of Defense technologists — and kept secret from the American people for much of the time since then.

This situation continues in spite of the fact that the existential EMP threat was made public by congressional actions almost 20-years ago, by establishing a Congressional EMP Commission that issued its findings and recommendations in 2004, 2008 and most recently in 2016-17. Click here the Commission’s reports, which are the most authoritative information on the EMP threat and how to counter it.

Nothing was done to counter the threat during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. It remains to be seen whether and how the Trump administration will fare in the face of continuing opposition from organizations such as EPRI and those who support them, particularly in the Washington “Swamp.”

I strongly encourage you to click here to read the Chairman’s July 2017 summary report that lays out with important notable specifics the issues that future White House/National Security Council initiatives should most definitely take into account.

The Commissioners deserve thanks from the American People in spite of actions of an ungrateful congress that abolished its operations in 2017, without even giving any thanks to commissioners who had served without compensation for 17-years. Such has been the resistance to recognizing and responding to this existential threat.

Efforts such as the EPRI activities are clear evidence of continuing resistance. Just click here for EPRI’s recent report and consider a couple of reactions.

The 148 page EPRI report is definitely not a valid assessment of the grid’s response to the EMP threat. For example, the Bulk Power Grid consists of Generation Plants and a Transmission Grid to deliver electricity to High Voltage “Step-Down” Transformers in important substations that connect to the Distribution Grid, through which electricity flows to hospitals, water-wastewater infrastructure, emergency managers, communications (including to support grid operations), factories, businesses, homes, etc.

But the EPRI report dealt only with the Transmission portion of the electric power grid, illustrated below in blue — hardly the full story, whatever might be associated with the details.

We hope our Lake Wylie Pilot Study in South Carolina’s York County, in conjunction with Duke Energy — which provides electricity via their Generation Power Plants and Transmission Grid and York County’s Distribution Grid — will enable us to export our “lessons-learned” throughout the nation.

We are considering all components of the Grid, unlike EPRI that has considered only the Transmission Grid — and purports to give, or at least imply, conclusions for the entire Grid. This analysis is hardly sound practice or good science.

EPRI claims its report is the “most significant collaborative research in this area to date, with funding and active support from more than 60 U.S. utilities, and collaboration with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy (including the three nuclear weapons laboratories), and the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC), which provides national coordination of government and utility preparation and response to disasters affecting the power system.”

This claim may be partially accurate — given EPRI’s collaboration with a notable number of others, but EPRI’s report is far from complete, and certainly EPRI is not the most competent authority on either the EMP threat or how to counter it.

Nevertheless, click here to illustrate that even Forbes can be fooled, as indicated in the opening sentence of a recent article, calling EPRI the country’s “preeminent electric research institution.”

Clearly, that authoritative distinction belongs to the Congressional EMP Commission that first reported on the existential threat in 2004. Classified matters were briefed to a closed session of congress (and of course the George W. Bush administration), click here for the unclassified report that was included in the Congressional Record. It made clear — 15 years ago — that a High Altitude EMP (HEMP) attack is an existential threat to the nation that can be posed by Russia, China, and others. And still we dither.

Indeed, neither the George W. Bush administration nor the electric power industry did anything, no doubt because many key technical details were kept under highly classified constraints. So, Congress reinstated the EMP Commission to provide more information. Click here, for that much more complete unclassified 2008 report, published toward the end of the George W. Bush administration, calling for specific actions to protect our critical civil infrastructure.

But, again, little if anything was done to deal with the existential threat, either by any government agency or in the private sector. So, the EMP Commission was again reinstated by congress, and was stalled for a year by the Defense Department, which was charged with supporting the commission. It then met on an accelerated schedule to produce several important reports, which again reflected that nothing had improved during the Obama administration.

A key recommendation was that President Trump should, by executive order, correct this past dismal record and chart a new course to protect the American people from the existential EMP threat they had first identified in 2004. And so he did on March 26, 2019.

Click here for an important associated summary article sharply and aptly entitled: “The EMP Executive Order: Where were Bush and Obama?” This authoritative National Review article deserves careful consideration when assessing the EMP Commission’s views that are contrary to EPRI findings.

Click here for the EMP Commission reports that are the most authoritative current basis for further efforts to protect our electric power grid. In particular, click here for the Chairman’s July 2017 Executive Summary. (Publication was actually delayed until April 2018 while the Defense Department stalled its release via the lethargic security review process).

Those EMP Commission reports define a substantially greater EMP threat to our critical civil infrastructure, including the electric power grid, than claimed by EPRI. In particular, the Commission predicts much higher amplitude EMP threats, based on U.S. experience over the past half century, including the analysis of data from Soviet high altitude nuclear tests that were better instrumented than our own. And a quick analysis by several commission experts suggests that EPRI may be grossly underestimating the threat to the viability of the electric power grid.

EPRI has made a serious mistake by not reviewing its approach and progress with Commissioners who have been actively involved for decades in protecting our most important military systems against EMP.

I encourage you to review the credentials of the Commissioners and the Commission staff, and ask yourself, “Why have current authorities ignored their recommendations and outrageously implied, if not actually stated, that the current less qualified and less experienced folks are somehow preferred as authoritative experts?”

These concerns remain unaddressed today. Instead, EPRI’s incomplete and erroneous report suggests the existence of a dangerous charade that actually threatens the viability of the nation.

Hopefully, those responsible for executing President Trump’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order on Electromagnetic Pulses will knock heads among the dysfunctional federal establishment and bring constructive order out of this situation.

But while the President’s Executive Order is surely gratifying to those of us who have advocated for protecting our critical civil infrastructure, we can’t pause in our efforts to actually deal with the threat.

I remain convinced that our wisest approach is from the bottom-up. Click here for my May 4, 2017 testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to that effect.

Moreover, I am persuaded from our Lake Wylie Pilot Study experience that we can quite affordably harden the electric power grid by using the same EMP hardening procedures that we have used for decades to design, deploy, assess and upgrade our most important military systems.

Click here for the completely unclassified Military Standard that was formulated by experts who had serious experience from the days when we actually tested our military systems to assure they can survive these nuclear weapon effects.

Dr. George Baker, who was actively involved in preparing these military standards three decades ago, worked with York County officials and engineers and Duke Energy engineers to assess the Distribution Grid and to estimate the costs of fully protecting their Distribution Grid — based on the same standards that protect our most important military systems.

In conjunction with our Lake Wylie Pilot Study, leaders of the Rock Hill Municipal Utility Company and the York County Electric Cooperative Company permitted access to their grid infrastructure and have openly cooperated in our activities. Duke Energy engineers also have been very cooperative and are conducting their own assessment and cost estimates for protecting their Generation and Transmission Grid infrastructure.

York County’s Distribution Grid infrastructure is connected to the “Generation” and “Transmission” portions of the grid — provided by Duke Energy. While the descriptors “Transmission” and “Distribution” seem subtly different since they both are pathways for electricity, the substance of that distinction at many levels is very important.

As illustrated above, “Transmission” lines (in blue) carry very high voltage — nominally over 100 kilovolts (KV) — electricity over long distances that is then stepped down by Extra High Voltage (EHV) and High Voltage (HV) Transformers to lower voltage “Distribution” lines (in green) that deliver electricity to most customers — perhaps most notably to private citizens, but also to most commercial and other customers that provide essential support to our citizens . Hospitals, water-wastewater infrastructure, essential communications — especially to support the electric grid and emergency management operations, etc. are important examples of these essential functions.

When we began our Lake Wylie Pilot Study, the engineers responsible for the Rock Hill Utility and York County Electric companies had not identified with the Duke engineers where their most important connections to Duke’s Transmission Grid should be located to meet citizens’ needs under a major stressed condition like an EMP attack.

So, while I was quite sure that Duke Engineers would do all they could to assure their grid (all components) is protected, there was little assurance that the Rock Hill/York County Distribution Grid would likewise be protected — and that fact notably left at risk such critical infrastructure as supports a major Rock Hill hospital, water-wastewater infrastructure and essential communications supporting most of York County.

In my opinion, water is next in importance to electricity itself — e.g., without water, hospital patients can be expected to begin dying within hours after the loss of water. That disconnect has been corrected.

The bottom line to George’s assessment is that the initial “one-time” cost for hardening the York County Distribution Grid would be less than what a York County family likely pays each month for health insurance — actually less than the monthly penalty cost in 2018 for an individual not having medical insurance.

This hardening is clearly affordable, and I believe that York County citizens can themselves afford the one-time costs to do this job and probably would if necessary. But their leaders need to engage more comprehensively to assure that all our citizens are protected — in South and North Carolina and beyond.

With that thought in mind, George also briefly considered the emergency management infrastructure for York County and its connections to South Carolina’s state capitol, Columbia. In particular he conducted an initial assessment of what it would cost to assure the ability to assure the “Palmetto 800” UHF communication system can provide emergency communications throughout South Carolina, and we are now considering how best to fund that important effort to help protect over 5 million citizens of South Carolina.

From my perspective, I believe we need to more fully develop a strategy for moving ahead throughout the state of South Carolina, North Carolina and beyond.

I’ve written about our Lake Wylie Pilot Study repeatedly since 2014. For the most comprehensive summary reports click here for my December 18, 2018 message that laid out in detail the origins of our effort; and click here for my January 15, 2019 message that updated it with a focus on exporting the lessons learned beyond South Carolina, including specifically the possibility of joining forces with our colleagues in Texas. And click here for my March 12, 2019 most recent discussion.

I chose to “address that threat from the bottom up” beginning in Rock Hill and York County. We now are seeking support for taking our efforts further. We seek to take our lessons-learned effort to Oconee and Anderson Counties of the Northwestern “Piedmont” section of South Carolina where a major Duke Energy nuclear power plant provides significant electricity to the nearby citizens, and in particular to the 263^rd Army Air and Missile Defense Command (AAMDC), which will link our efforts to a national command and control network that is key to the defense of our nation.

Our joint efforts with Duke Energy will continue — not only in Oconee and Anderson Counties, but also into North Carolina, first by completing our Lake Wylie Pilot Study in Gaston County which has characteristics similar to York County’s and then to a much more complex situation in Mecklenburg County, which includes Duke’s Corporate Headquarters in Charlotte.

Once we are done there, and perhaps before, we will be prepared to take our lessons-learned to other metropolitan areas. And none too soon, I might add, and hopefully in a way that is responsive to the stated concerns of Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

I’ve previously written about the February 27, 2019 Round Table he chaired. Click here for that full hearing, well worth a couple of hours of your time, and here for Dr. Baker’s prepared testimony, which in my view was the most representative presentation of the current situation — and one on which Senator Johnson asked all hearing participants to comment.

I’ll close this message with Senator Johnson’s summary statement that expresses his frustration with the past performance of the Federal response to the existential EMP threat:

“We have known about the existential threat posed by electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) for decades. Because most people are either unaware of the danger, or view these as very low probability events, there has not been sufficient public pressure to take effective action to mitigate these threats. Instead, we establish commissions and study panels, conduct research, and develop plans to develop strategies. It is way past time to stop admiring this problem, and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever-increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.”

To which I again say: “Amen!!!!”

Bottom Lines.

Regarding the EPRI EMP Report, the most important point is perhaps found in the final two paragraphs of Bill Gertz’s article — specifically that USAF Lt. General Steven Kwast promised to put it “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” . . . to be presented to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other leaders.

The Lake Wylie Pilot Study has demonstrated how to accomplish a viable assessment and estimate valid, affordable associated costs to assure “from the bottom-up” a viable Distribution Gird to deliver electric power to the citizens of Rock Hill and York County. This same methodology can be used in assessing the Generation and Transmission portions of the grid.

This Pilot Study approach is an appropriate model for others to copy in responding to President Trump’s Executive Order directing the executive branch “powers that be” to protect the nation’s electric power grid.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

Click here to make a tax deductible gift. If you prefer to mail a check, Please send it High Frontier, 20 F Street 7^th Floor, Washington, DC 20001.

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