A terrorist attack on the U.S. power grid could be more destructive than superstorm Sandy, possibly costing hundreds of billions of dollars and leading to thousands of deaths, the National Academy of Sciences said.
While such an event probably wouldn’t kill people immediately, it could cause widespread blackouts for weeks or months, according to a recently declassified report released today by the Academy. If it occurred during extreme weather, heat stress or exposure to cold may lead to “hundreds or even thousands of deaths,” the authors of the study wrote.
“An event of this magnitude and duration could lead to turmoil, widespread public fear, and an image of helplessness that would play directly into the hands of the terrorists,” they said.
While other entities have issued reports on electric-grid vulnerabilities, the study released today provides an unusually stark picture of what might happen if hackers, extremist groups, disgruntled employees or even energy companies sabotage the nation’s power network. It calls for the government to create a national inventory of portable generation equipment that can be used during such an event.
An attack “could be carried out by knowledgeable attackers with little risk of detection or interdiction,” it said.
2007 Study
The study released today by the National Academy of Sciences was sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security and completed by the National Research Council, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences. Although the report was finished in 2007, PresidentGeorge W. Bush’s administration a year later prevented it from being distributed publicly. The panel of experts who prepared the report, believing it contained no classified information, pressed for its dissemination. In August, the administration of President Barack Obama agreed to declassify most of the study.
National Academy of Sciences President Ralph J. Cicerone, and Charles M. Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering, in a forward to the report, said its key findings remain “highly relevant.” The men also are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.
Multiple Attacks
While a hurricane or ice storm usually only takes down distribution lines that utility crews can put back up, terrorists can disable transformers, which may take years to replace, said Alan Crane, a senior scientist who worked on the report. A well-planned operation could take out several substations, he said.
“It’s the multiple attacks that have the really scary consequences,” Crane said. Although the probability of such a conspiracy is low, the consequences “could just be really awful.”
The report raises questions about how a blackout would affect services including medical care, the water supply and the pumping of natural gas, which uses compressors powered by electricity, he said.
“Living without electricity is one thing,” Crane said. “Living without water is something else.”
Network Stress
“The push by federal regulators to introduce competition in bulk power across the country has also resulted in the transmission network being used in ways for which it was not designed,” the study’s authors wrote.
A 2005 U.S. energy law included measures to strengthen the power grid’s reliability, and theFederal Energy Regulatory Commission now has the ability to issue fines as high as $1 million per day for each reliability violation.
Cyber attackers “could magnify the damage of a physical attack” by disabling computerized security systems or blocking signals to grid operators, the report said.
Other threats to the grid may include terrorist groups, disgruntled or bored individuals, or energy companies seeking to thwart competitors, it said. A 2011 report from the Electric Power Research Institute said that about $3.7 billion in investment is needed to protect the grid from cyber attacks.
Bloomberg has the full article
