One Iranian nuclear weapon could black out America

OPINION:

Even a single nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude over the United States poses an existential threat to most, if not all, Americans.

Why? Because we have failed to protect our critical, life-supporting electric infrastructure against such an event. An electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is an electric shock that could shut down the majority of our electric power grid, likely preventing power restoration for a very long time (a matter of months or years).

The effects could bring our nation to its knees. People couldn’t live long without electricity. Just as important, many cars and trucks wouldn’t work either.

We have known all about this for a long time. We have protected our most important military systems against it since its potentially lethal effects were discovered in the early 1960s. A congressionally appointed EMP Commission thoroughly considered the problem and formally documented its conclusions in testimony and several reports.

Congress was thoroughly warned as well, particularly at a May 4, 2017, hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Yet little, if anything, has been done since to protect our life-supporting electric grid. It is hard to believe, but it is a fact.

Again, a single nuclear weapon exploded high above Earth would quickly produce an EMP on a wide area of the planet’s surface, causing an enormous voltage and current surge in the nation’s electric power grid. This would likely destroy our key, difficult-to-replace elements, such as the huge transformers essential to providing electricity to essentially our entire population.

We can protect those transformers by installing grounding devices that guard against the huge voltage thrust. The cost of grounding devices for all the nation’s estimated 5,000 to 6,000 transformers is believed to be a most affordable $4 billion to $5 billion. Still, there is more to do.

The electric system that serves our country is not that simple. Beyond the transformers is an entire system of energy production and distribution, most of which is owned and operated by co-ops and other, more localized companies in cities and counties.

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Protecting that widespread system throughout the U.S. is estimated to cost local subscribers less than $10 on their monthly electric bills.

We have understood this threat for more than 60 years, since our 1962 high-altitude nuclear test (Starfish Prime) in the South Pacific. That test turned out the lights and damaged other electrical systems in Hawaii, some 900 miles away, and damaged nearly all our satellites of the era.

In 2001, the Congressional EMP Caucus began widely reporting these facts. Yet little was done before President Trump issued an executive order in 2019 directing the federal government to address the vulnerability. Regrettably, the Biden administration did not continue that initiative.

Thanks to the U.S. Senate, led by Sens. Jim Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, and Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, that executive order was written into the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. That made it the law of the land, which still applies today.

We urge Mr. Trump to finish the job.

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The Iranians know all about EMP. They have written about it, and they know full well what a single nuclear weapon can do. That is why even one such weapon in the hands of the mullahs is one too many.

• Rudy Boschwitz was a U.S. senator from Minnesota from 1978 to 1991. He is a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission and served as President George H.W. Bush’s emissary to Ethiopia. Henry F. Cooper was U.S. ambassador and defense and space negotiator with the Soviet Union under President Reagan and Strategic Defense Initiative director under President George H.W. Bush.