Study: U.S. power grid vulnerable to terrorist attack

Nov 15 - USA TODAY

After Hurricane Sandy left millions in the dark, a long-delayed federal study Wednesday says the U.S. power grid is also vulnerable to terrorist attacks that could cause months of blackouts and billions in economic damage.

The nation's grid is spread across hundreds of miles, and many key pieces of equipment are either unguarded or so old they lack the sensors to limit outages from cascading, according to the study by the National Research Council (NRC).

"We could easily be without power across a multistate region for many weeks or months, because we don't have many spare transformers," says M. Granger Morgan, engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University and chairman of the NRC committee that wrote the report. He says a terrorist attack could cause disruptions worse than Sandy and rack up "hundreds of billions of dollars" in damages.

The NRC completed the report in 2007, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decided to classify it until August, when all but a few pages of the report were cleared for publication.

"It was very frustrating," Morgan says of the delay. He says the committee understood the need to protect national security and was careful not to provide a "cookbook" for terrorists.

The report focuses partly on high-voltage transformers -- huge, difficult to move, often custom-built, and hard to replace, because most are no longer made in the United States. It recommends developing smaller portable ones for temporary use to reduce delays in restoring power.

Morgan says DHS has "done a little" to develop spare low-voltage transformers but says "there's a long way to go."

DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard said the agency"continues to work every day to adapt and strengthen our security and resilience against an ever-changing threat."

The report says the federal government faces difficulty in addressing weaknesses in the nation's power grid, because more than 90% of the grid is privately owned and regulated by the states. Still, it calls on DHS or the Department of Energy to study where the U.S. is most vulnerable and to develop cost-effective strategies.

"The NRC is right to call for more investment in making our grid both more secure and more resilient in the face of attacks," says Richard Caperton, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank. He says a terrorist attack is unlikely but, as Hurricane Sandy shows, "Anything that disrupts power supply can have catastrophic consequences."

Morgan says many steps that could protect the grid from terrorism would also protect it from extreme weather. He points to smart meters, saying they disconnect damaged properties so power can be restored more quickly to the rest of a neighborhood without fear of explosions. He says much of Long Island and New Jersey lacks such technology.