Steven Starr is an expert knowledgeable about high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP). His analysis leads him to the conclusion that an opponent doesn’t need large numbers of nuclear weapons to destroy the United States. Three will suffice.
Starr’s analysis will be considered controversial, because it shows EMP to be a grave risk to the safety of nuclear power plants. The Nuclear Regulator Commission (NRC), a captured agency, denies that EMP poses a threat because the nuclear utilities do not want to be forced to spend lots of money to correct design flaws in their plants.
EMP is considered a “non-design basis event”, and was not considered in the design and construction of US nuclear power plants — none of which were designed or retrofitted to be protected from EMP. Officers of the US Air Force, who formed the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force (EDTF), issued two reports (in 2018 and 2019) that identified the EMP risk to both nuclear reactors and their spent fuel pools, and called for comprehensive testing to prove the electronics and emergency power systems at the plants were safe from EMP. The NRC was forced to consider the EDTF concerns but maintained its position and did no testing. The electric utilities have also attempted to downplay the dangers of EMP. They set up an “independent” organization, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which receives funding from the Department of Energy and Department of State, that produced a study that minimized the dangers that EMP poses to the grid and critical national infrastructure. The EDTF issued a detailed report that rejected the findings of the EPRI. The entire subject of EMP has been complicated by vested interests. Trump was the only president who has showed some concerned with EMP. During his first term, directives were issued that indicated the US was finally going to act to protect its power grids, etc. But all that was shut down by Biden. A Grid Resilience bill has been introduced in the Texas legislature that requires the Texas power grid to be protected from EMP....
Read full text: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/03/20/an-analysis-of-emp-attack-on-the-u-s-power-grids-and-critical-national-infrastructure/
