What Happens to Nuclear Power Plants Following an EMP?

Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson was a Special Forces Medic, EMT and ACLS-certified, with comprehensive training in wilderness survival, rescue, and patient-extraction. He is a Certified Master Herbalist and a graduate of the Global College of Natural Medicine of Santa Ana, CA. A graduate of the U.S. Army’s survival course of SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape), Mr. Johnson also successfully completed the Montana Master Food Preserver Course for home-canning, smoking, and dehydrating foods.

Mr. Johnson dries and tinctures a wide variety of medicinal herbs taken by wild crafting and cultivation, in addition to preserving and canning his own food. An expert in land navigation, survival, mountaineering, and parachuting as trained by the United States Army, Mr. Johnson is an ardent advocate for preparedness, self-sufficiency, and long-term disaster sustainability for families. He and his wife survived Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Cross-trained as a Special Forces Engineer, he is an expert in supply, logistics, transport, and long-term storage of perishable materials, having incorporated many of these techniques plus some unique innovations in his own homestead.

Mr. Johnson brings practical, tested experience firmly rooted in formal education to his writings and to our team. He and his wife live in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with their three cats.

43 Comments on "What Happens to Nuclear Power Plants Following an EMP?"

Southwest_PA on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 7:35 am 



I always read the source before the article. Ready Nutrition… selling “survival food”. Doom prophecies increase sales!

Anonymous on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 8:36 am 



Someone should inform this survival food store that bird poop is a far more potent(smelling) threat to the uS’s rusty nuclear power stations than EMP or hollywood fear-porn scenarios.

Olympus has fallen, LoL…..

Practicalmaina on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 8:44 am 



Their map is crap as well, it shows 2 reactors in my area, both of which have been shuttered, they still probably need power and controls to cool spent fuel pools? But not going to quickly boil off all available water and explode like Fuk. Look at all those reactors in low lying fFlorida, with their abundant sunshine, ocean currents, ect. Greedy utilities!

penury on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 9:14 am 



I understand that nuclear bombs will also create problems. Has anyone ever computed what a tornado hitting the plant would do? How about if rebels manage to steal a few tons of the material stored there? The hypothetical problems are so severe I think I will go hide in a secure area. Gee folks reality is never as much fun as fantasy.

ghung on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 9:46 am 



http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-reactors.html

ghung on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 9:51 am 



http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactors/

onlooker on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 9:55 am 



so let me get this straight in the event of a huge A coronal mass ejection (or CME) the nuclear plants would all go into meltdown mode or at least their safeguards would be disabled?

Bonsu on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 10:20 am 



http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2011/10/31/keeping-u-s-reactors-safe-from-power-pulses/

Without giving details, they are at least aware of the possibility, and claim the plant systems based on their analysis would be largely unaffected by an EMP.

Kenz300 on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 10:35 am 



Fukushima Should Have Served as Wake-Up Call for U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/10/fukushima-wake-up-call-nrc/
—-

7 Top NRC Experts Break Ranks to Warn of Critical Danger at Aging Nuke Plants

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/09/nrc-experts-warn-dangers-nuclear/

Bob Owens on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 10:50 am 



Any EMP attack would probably be answered by turning a fraction of the world into an ashtray. Let’s hope we never go there. Preparing for events like this is pretty hopeless. The damage would be too great, too much panic, too much death. Better to try to reduce your electrical usage so nuke plants lose money and close up. This appears to be happening now, along with coal plant closings. With any luck we just might get a lot of it shut down without problems. Nuke waste storage would be another chapter in the grim nuclear story.

Robert Critchley on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 11:21 am 



If a catastrophic EMP situation actually occurred, It would be much worse. A lot of survivors would become animals. It would be a looting situation, murder, total unrest. Communications would be down. There would be bands of people wanting to control. Anarchy would rein. Yes if such a situation ever materials, it would excruciating.

longtimber on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 12:40 pm 



All Japan’s reactors cold except 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan
Fukushima’s Level 7 event was caused by Power Failure.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/fukushima-accident-upgraded-to-severity-level-7/

Leslie W Knight on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 1:43 pm 



You Sir, have absolutely no idea what you are talking about regarding nuclear power plants safe shut down operations.

Our nukes have enough diesel storage to run backup generators to power the coolant systems for 30 days or more without even getting more delivered.

I can’t stand bloggers that google up some info on the internet and then somehow become all knowing experts to write a goofy article trying to scare people or simply use shock value click bait. Either case, pretty worthless

Go Speed Racer on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 1:52 pm 



Fortunately all the reactors are on the East coast. We can do without that half of the country

We could be running liquid fluoride Thorium reactors. That design cannot melt down. It doesn’t produce much waste. There are no swimming pools filled with dangerous spent rods. However General Electric would suffer reduced profits, due to lost sales of their crappy fuel rods. So it’s better we should all die when their swimming pools boil dry. Be glad you gave your life, to raise the price of GE stock. You should be glad to lose your life, to increase the wealth of the 0.01%

davee thompson on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 1:58 pm 



@ Leslie you say;”Our nukes have enough diesel storage to run backup generators to power the coolant systems for 30 days or more without even getting more delivered.” Then what? After thirty days no fuel no power to cool the spent fuel rods. Is the assumption then made a problem will only last thirty days? No worries?

PracticalMaina on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 2:05 pm 



@ Leslie what happens if those diesels are inundated with water or a magnetic pulse that wipes out controls, O I think we all know what happens but don’t want to acknowledge that.

John Carey on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 2:37 pm 



The facts are this article is a joke.
trying to give hope where there would be no hope.

first you have to understand an emp and the effects witch this article does not include.

Yes they burn out ALL electronics that are not protected, BUT there is a second effect which is they disrupt the ions that are floating in the air. what this means as a example: you put a brand new car battery in a 4″ square lead grounded box, get hit with a emp, then take that battery out and attempt to use it, it will only operate at 1/4 to 1/2 of its original power due to the disruption of the ions and this will continue to last until the ions stabilize again, which will depend on the strength of the first emp and how many additional’s where set off.

Now for the power plants- point blank everybody east of the Mississippi river will be screwed, Backup generators ARE NOT going to work and there not going to go down to the local home depot and pick one up.
on top of that everyone that was trained to work on them has already seen the writing on the wall and split because there is nothing they can do, There want be days before a melt down it will be hours.
Just 3 air burst emps place 1000 miles inland down the east cost would finish the east coast off for generations. our country is not prepared to handle one melt down, just imagine a dozen or more at the same time

Cathy Farrell on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 2:47 pm 



Is there anything positive anymore? I just thought of electrical and electronic outages. Now I got to worry about nuclear accidents. I think we should start shutting down nuclear power facilities now. No only for threats against us, but because it makes sense. The Japan incident tells us that we really don’t have a handle on these matters. Don’t forget there are real threats of earthquakes too. Maybe we could build ice walls around these facilities just in case of a meltdown and double the insulation around them. I know it would cost, but think of what would happen if something happens. Of course, the better way is to ease their operations out and find some way to shut them down safely now before anything happens. Of course, they probably won’t do that because that makes too much sense. So what else it new? I feel sorry for the young people. All we had to worry about was getting a job. All they have to worry about is having a world.

PracticalMaina on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 3:03 pm 



John they need some old school steam powered tech with mechanical controls, or some horses and a fly wheel. That would be ironic seeing some technological dinosaur keeping a plant from melting.

Seren verch Dafydd on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 4:18 pm 



What a bunch of hogwash. I am a retired Control Systems Engineer, and spent over 30 years designing control systems and safety systems for the petrochemical and power industry.

Nuclear Power plants have been required to be “hardened” against Electromagnetic Pulses since the 1950s when the first nuclear power plant, Shipping Port I, went on line.
This means that the electrical equipment, wiring and control systems and instruments are all required to meet the same standards as military equipment, and to be able to function without problems after a nuclear strike.
Containment buildings are required to be strong enough to survive a direct missile hit, or a strike by a large airplane. Again, a requirement put in place during the Cold War in the 1950s.
This information is available to anyone who checks on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s website.

Greater threat to power plants [both nuclear and conventional] and the power grid are Coronal Mass Ejections [CME] from the Sun. A CME can cause the Earth’s magnetic field to vary when it hits, which causes currents to be generated in wiring. Long wires, like transmission lines can be subjected to several thousand volts of induced current and actually melt. Electrical generators at power plants can be affected as well.
All power plants have automatic shutdown systems to limit the possibility of damage. And we know these systems work as in 1989 the Earth was subjected to a very large CME which resulted in a geomagnetic storm that among other things shut down Quebec Hydro, cause a blackout in Eastern Canada and North eastern USA. Wikipedia has a good article on this [as in easy to read], although it is out of date on the state of preparedness for geomagnetic storms.

shortonoil on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 4:54 pm 



After an EMP attack the entire civilian population will be without power, without food, with few if any operating motor vehicles, no monetary system, no medical services, no police protection, no communications; there will be nothing but absolute, total, complete chaos. Now who exactly is going to be showing up to work to keep these things from melting down.

100% absolute fail safe systems are an oxymoron; file them under ridiculous, absurd heaps of human hubris.

GregT on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 5:42 pm 



short,

The Titanic was unsinkable. regardless of what people say. 🙂

Dan M on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 7:12 pm 



What about a way to to supercool the spent rods with liquid nitrogen?

makati1 on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 7:35 pm 



Whew! Denial is deep on this one. Those 100+ nuke plants in the Us has scared some of you shitless. You should be. I bet not one in ten of you even know what an EMP is let alone how damaging it would be to the grid and everything with electronics embedded in it. Not to mention the 250,000+ tons of radioactive waste sitting in those, soon to dry up, pools.

We have dodged a natural solar EMP twice in the last year. Once by only a few days. It is not a matter of “IF” one will hit, but when. As for man made, that can happen anytime. It is the perfect first strike on the US. Chaos from an unknown source. Are all of those satellites flying over the US just communications? I doubt it.

But as some mentioned, radiation will take a back seat to the fantastic chaos and rioting that will happen first. Every modern vehicle (your car) will shut off causing thousands of accidents in the first minutes. Traffic controls, ditto.

Airplanes will crash when their engines shut down. Certainly all of their instruments and controls will be useless as will be their communications.

Perhaps all of the country’s emergency systems will not even kick in as their electronic controls don’t work. But even they will need fuel and that will not be pumped if the pump controls contain electronics.

Every appliance in your house will be dead, permanently. Radios, etc will be useless. And on and on.

So, deny the effects if you want. Wither man made or natural, an EMP will kill our present world and millions of people in the first weeks. The grid will never come back up. The world will be a less nice place to survive in.

KG on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 9:58 pm 



More click bait. This article is completely ridiculous and written by the typical anti-nuclear crazies who jump a bandwagon to promote a cause, for a week, then on to the next mission.

Nuclear power and spent fuel is very well secured, safe, and cool. Having worked in the nuclear industry for 10 years, I can say that the redundant systems have redundant systems. Some of those even have redundant systems of their own. Cooling would not be nearly the issue this article makes it sound. This is a typical “blood and guts” article written by someone who lacks the fundamental intelligence to perform the most minor research to find out how safe nuclear plants are.

Using Three-Mile Island, which was NOT a radioactive release is another poor attempt to scare people. Fukushima was a worst case scenario with nature throwing a fury at that plant that could not be expected and that exceeded design specifications for the facility. Nuclear plants can only be built to certain specifications and those are done with worst case scenarios in mind. Unfortunately, with Fukushima, the worst case scenario turned out to be worse than the planners thought and designed against.

Yes, and EMP would have a disastrous effect on quite a lot of things, but throwing out an ignorant idea such as a radioactive release as a threat because of an EMP is simply doomsday rhetoric.

The fact is that an EMP alone cannot cause the type of catastrophe, a massive radioactive release, that this article is alluding to. Many other events, most of which I cannot detail, would have to happen in conjunction with the EMP to come close to even a minor release of radiation.

Rest assured that yet another doomsayer with some absurd disaster scenario has not done nearly enough homework for anyone to consider panic. If you live near a nuclear power plant, you are in much more danger from severe weather than you are from a release of radiation.

anthony on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 10:22 pm 



I’ve used solar for energy since the early 80’s. Your elected wonders have destroyed the ability to function properly with ‘natural’ elements. The cost would be little to apply these advantages if your Congress would put a lid on the Oil Kings around the world. I’ve seen bikes with batteries that do 30 kph.
The individual talking about an EMP is correct. Not if…but when one hits…it will be a very different world out there. Whether it is from a foreign Country or from that wonderful Sun of ours.
Your President and others within the Homeland Security have been more concerned with the ‘Sand Box’ and ‘political religious correctness’ than the actual security of the Nation!
Such a ‘powerful’ country that can’t defend itself…yet telling others what they should do. It is really past time to wake up. All that ‘might’ and a leader with no backbone or commitment!

davee thompson on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 10:44 pm 



Hey KG you said;”Unfortunately, with Fukushima, the worst case scenario turned out to be worse than the planners thought and designed against.” The back up generators were in the basement and got flooded out in a nuke situated next to the ocean you and the planners both sound kind of dumb.

GregT on Fri, 11th Mar 2016 11:06 pm 



“I’ve used solar for energy since the early 80’s. Your elected wonders have destroyed the ability to function properly with ‘natural’ elements.”

So what, exactly, are you using that solar energy for anthony? Natural elements?

Dick Bird on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 2:03 am 



the only way any emp is going to happen is in a nuclear attack. I really don’t think the state of those plants is going to be my number one worry at that point

The Wanderer on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 3:31 am 



Map shows at least 3 sites in New England that were decomissioned and completely restored to virgin condition. Probably many more errors!

Robert on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 4:39 am 



Nuclear power in itself is a disaster. With so many other ways to create electricity, why do we have power plants that creates nuclear spent fuel that lasts over 10,000 years, is a danger to all life on earth, with no place to store it?

Davy on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 6:00 am 



Bitch, moan and complain about the evil NUK power but it is a vital part of our energy mix too large to transition away from. People always want their cake and eat it. There is no way we can transition away from current energy sources except around the fringes. We are a world quickly becoming poor. We will not have the scale of time and wealth to transition away from dangerous fossil fuels and NUK. We are going to have to learn to live with these poisons we created as we pay the price for our species hubris. NUK cannot be quickly abandoned without destroying the global economy that feeds and shelters us. We must have a stable and relatively strong economy to manage NUK power dangers.

Our existential options are a slow death or a quick death. A slow boil will be maintaining what we have as our economy and environment die from the disaster that is modern man. If you want to save the earth ecosystem so there is a successor to modern man then we need to kill 9 out of 10 of us right now and quickly. We can all choose the die in one great death event. We could have some kind of mass overdose. We have the technology to make it enjoyable and quick. We need to choose who is going to be the survivors. We will need to find a secure location that will allow this beautiful Avatar society to continue the survival of the human DNA.

Basically we are screwed and going to pay the price for our actions. Everyone is to blame for being human. If you value a little more life then we all need to try to practice some relative sacrifice without too much disruption or we are all going to die quicker. A quicker death will be a painful death. There is no escaping this horrible event at our doorstep. Some will die sooner than others and unfairly. This process will not be fair because nature could give a shit about human ideas of fairness. Worms eat saints as well as sinners.

Kenz300 on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 9:05 am 



Nuclear energy is poisoning the planet…………

5 Years After Fukushima, ‘No End in Sight’ to Ecological Fallout

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/05/5-years-after-fukushima/

shortonoil on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 10:36 am 



The only thing that I can come up with is that all the engineers designing safety systems for nuclear power plants flunked Statistics 101.

They just don’t seem to understand that the tail of that curve NEVER hits the X axis.

shortonoil on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 10:46 am 



By the way, has anyone seen a couple of misplaced reactor cores hanging around lately? They are hard to miss – they glow a lot!

If you do, don’t try to apprehend, they are likely armed, and dangerous.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-11/fukushima-five-years-later-fuel-rods-melted-through-containment-and-nobody-knows-whe

Nixboox on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 11:43 am 



This “article” is just priceless! Did someone dig this out of an archive from 2001 somewhere? 15 years later are there REALLY still people out there who think that EMPs are a real thing? The Inverse Square Law (look it up, its “science”) proves that you never have to worry about any EMP. In fact, if there were an EMP big enough to cause you problems with your electrical devices then you will have been subjected to a nuclear bomb so powerful as to not have long to worry about that EMP…because you’ll be dead.

If you feel compelled to worry about something, worry about Zika. It has the potential to end the human race…it just isn’t as TV friendly as the threat of magical bomb science from the sky…

shortonoil on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 12:53 pm 



“If you feel compelled to worry about something, worry about Zika.”

The electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) generated from a nuclear detonation has been know for more than 60 years. The Russians hardened their entire air force against it back in the 50’s; the US rapidly followed suite. Your information is incorrect and out of date , by about half a century.

Apneaman on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 1:30 pm 



What a cowardly site this is. Real shit is going down daily from the actions of the fossil fueled cancer monkeys and all they can come up with is crap like this fantasy article. Head up ass la la la I’m not listening or looking.

Rain records are being broken daily.

http://www.wkyc.com/weather/storms-soaking-south-west-with-record-rains/78189405

Heat records are being broken.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/scorching-start-to-autumn-smashed-national-heat-records-bureau-of-meteorology-says-20160312-gnha5q.html#ixzz42i7jzGZR

And every indication is that there is more and worse to come, yet it’s sci fi bullshit and endless speculative barrel counting on this site – like counting matters.

Deweyville, Texas, Prepares for Unprecedented Flooding; Judge Orders Mandatory Evacuations

https://weather.com/safety/floods/news/deweyville-texas-flooding-problems

Hell what could be more exciting than watching the new mother nature taking over and laying the boots to a bunch of mouth breathing denier states.

Trump 2016 – He’ll deport the catastrophic weather and build a weather wall and make nature pay for it.

Scott Powers on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 2:37 pm 



The Bullshit author states that it is not uncommon to have one reactor working and two shut down. There are only two plants in the US with more than two units so it seems pretty rare to me. The whole article is laughable.

onlooker on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 4:16 pm 



“Trump 2016 – He’ll deport the catastrophic weather and build a weather wall and make nature pay for it.” haha, what is more he will make sure the wild weather translates to more jobs. Yes, even on this site denial exists!

GregT on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 6:22 pm 



“what is more he will make sure the wild weather translates to more jobs.”

Climate change = good for the economy

🙂

makati1 on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 10:20 pm 



EMPs are as real as any other natural occurrence. The sun shots them out on a regular basis but we have dodged the bullet for the last 150 or so years. It barely missed us about three years ago. It is not “IF” but “WHEN.

“The earth barely missed taking a massive solar punch in the teeth two weeks ago, an “electromagnetic pulse” so big that it could have knocked out power, cars and iPhones throughout the United States.”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/2533727

We live in a digital world. Those little lines on chips can be fried easily. Hold your cell phone up to an electromagnet for a few seconds and learn just how fragile your world is.

makati1 on Sat, 12th Mar 2016 10:31 pm 



Just a thought. Can you imagine most of the 300+ million vehicles suddenly shutting down all over the US? Never to start again? If it is controlled by a computer chip, it is vulnerable.

How about every cell phone, I-pad, PC, smart meter, ATM, traffic light, etc? That electronic safe you have stashed in the closet? All those pics in those cubes you never printed out? Your bank account? Pace-maker? DVD player? And on and on.

We are a digital people. All dependent on nature to not hit us with a hot flash from the sun. Mother Nature has a warped sense of humor but follows the rules. None say we are safe.

Interesting thought, no? LOL