Broken/Special:Badtitle/NS100:JamesMoore/The UK Government Respond Regarding Solar Flare Threat
On the 27th May I e-mailed several organisations within the UK and one within the EU Commission. One of these organisations was the UK's Department for Energy and Climate Change. The content of that e-mail was as follows:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Please can you state whether the predicted major solar flares, that Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox had spoken of on the 20th September, could disrupt power to the cooling systems of Britain's 19 or so nuclear reactors?
Furthermore what action has been taken or is planned to be taken in order to prevent such disruptions and therefore prevent multiple nuclear meltdowns?
This also applies to the other secret military, research and other nuclear reactors.
Yours faithfully,
James Moore
Today, on the 10th June 2011, I received a response from the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change. Click the following link to read it:
How should I respond, if at all?
In my opinion it is reassuring to read that their work is still ongoing with regards to their investigations into the level of the threat:
Until recently, it was believed that this incident in 1989 represented the most severe consequences of “space weather” that we were likely to experience in the UK.
However, recent work in the USA has suggested that more intense episodes are
possible, albeit on an infrequent basis. My officials have met with experts from both America and the UK, together with the National Grid to quantify this risk and decide on the appropriate response to it. This work is ongoing.
Since I don't know whether the solar flares that threaten us would prevent continuous operation of any electrical device (including the backup generators for the nuclear cooling systems), I cannot really ask for more reassurances, can I?
