Power breakdown as terrorists blow up grid

[Dr. Strangelove]

So, Just blowing up one transmission tower can choke whole country? What kind of brainless people we have in planning?

nawaz sharief shahbaz sharief zordari khwaja asif dadar and the list goes on

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Raiwand has probably got its own captive Nuclear Power Plant

Nawaz Sharif lives in his palace at Raiwand with a generator and tank full of petrol. Nawaz's family probably never have faced electricity, gas and water shortage since he became Minister of Finance of Punjab province during Ziaul Huq times.

 

[dexter]

Tribute to the Nationwide Blackout we are experiencing at the moment

 

[definitelynotIndian]

So, Just blowing up one transmission tower can choke whole country? What kind of brainless people we have in planning?

Most of the countries have a connected central electric grid. Because surplus from one part of country could be utilised in other part of the country with a deficit. Imagine a heart connected to all body parts now if they blow up the central grid of course no one would have electricity. Terrorists have some electrical engineers working for them else they wouldn't know striking which transmission lines would lead to maximum power outage. Scary stuff!

 

[Armstrong]

Tribute to the Nationwide Blackout we are experiencing at the moment

Bhabi ko yahiii line maariii thiii ?

 

[dexter]

Bhabi ko yahiii line maariii thiii ?

Bhabhi abhi to uske liye mein bohat chota hun aur agar aesa hua to ami ne mujhe ghar se nikal dena hai

 

[livingdead]

technical fault apparently.. not sure if Nawaz Shareef could have prevented it... even US had grid failure.

 

[Armstrong]

Bhabhi abhi to uske liye mein bohat chota hun aur agar aesa hua to ami ne mujhe ghar se nikal dena hai

Lo kar lo baaat; at 21 Altaf Bhai had already married his 3rd wife !

 

[Jaanbaz]

Wait, the whole of Pakistan uses 7K MW of power? For 200 million people? How the hell is that even possible? You literally have to have a fridge in your house and that's it. Even then you're going over 7K MW if all households had a fridge. Basically half the country must be running on steam power then lol

Pakistani politicians are clowns playing sick games with people of Pakistan.

 

[nvKyleBrown]

Sir, I think It dose not work that way.

TLDR: The reactor cores will be safe no matter what. Until someone genuinely screws up.

Full format: Those power plant will be safeguarded against any such events. Plus a national grid may trip not the reactor. One should understand that a Nuclear Power plan like hydro has two component, the power generation and the nuclear or the hydro part (pls accept this tongue and cheek nomenclature for explaining in a highly abstracted scenario. ) When the grid trips the power plants feeding it will be the first to know it. They can reduce the load of the power plant to suite the need. They do this either by dis-engaging the turbines from the steam or just closing the gates for dams.

I will clear one thing, Grid Shutdown dose not equate Reactor Shutdown. Sometimes power generation can be the byproduct of it's primary task. They can shutdown the power generation without even messing up with the core. And if it's known that the grid is down for a good number of days then the management will be more than happy to shutdown the core. Why? Bcoz a tons of maintenance activity could be done with, which would otherwise would have to wait till the next fuel cycle. Plus rigorous safety check can also take place.( Those with safety inspectors in NR are some harda$$es !! )

Unlike popular belief, emergency shutting down a nuclear plant, if the need arise to, is an automated process where humans have no role to play, due to self preservation. If some critical system goes out, the backup kicks in. But if all such back up fails, which is highly unlikely as backups are quadrupled even for non-essential systems, the mechanism to shutdown kicks in. The automated system has it's own power supply, both on-board and streamed from remote sites. The on-board system consists of multiple small gens with their own fuel reserves. These systems are untouchable by any such "Fuel Shortages". Moreover until great mechanical failures occur, the plant can generate enough power to sustain itself. Unless every goddamn system fails, meltdown won't be possible even if someone wanted to. Even then the control rods can be "Gravity Dropped" into the core, to cool it down.

So for such a minor grid trip, like this one, the nuclear power plant are safe. I will go out on a limb to say that they are probably the most secure places to be in during such stuff. There is always an outlet around to charge your phone ( to play awesome music) and rail-gun (to ward off those waves of zombies coming in ) [cheap attempt of comic relive]

Generally, I agree. But, you still have issues with long-term safety - the reactor itself will be "controlled", but there is still enough residual heat generation that you will have to continue providing some cooling water - both to the reactor and to various cooling ponds where "spent" fuel is stored. This was the problem at Fukashima - the cooling ponds started running low. Not overnight, but prolonged power outage can cause some serious problems. Have to find a way to keep the water pumps running.

This whole incident suggests that Pakistan's power infrastructure would be a very ripe high-reward/low-cost target for terrorists. Just taking out transmission lines seems like it would be highly effective, not to mention pipelines. Very hard targets to defend, given they area they cover. Maybe they don't do it because terrorists don't like to cut their own AC?

 

[My-Analogous]

A view of a Karachi neighbourhood after Saturday night’s power breakdown. PHOTO: EXPRESS

LAHORE / QUETTA / ISLAMABAD / KARACHI: Almost all of Pakistan plunged into darkness around 11:50 pm on Saturday night as an attack by Baloch separatists on transmission lines near Naseerabad in Balochistan caused nearly the entire national grid to trip, shutting down electricity supply to over 80% of the country.

The transmission tower blown up was near Notal, a town in Naseerabad district in Balochistan, confirmed Sharbat Umrani, the head of the local police station. The damage to the 220 kilovolt-Amperes (kVA) transmission lines between Sibi and Quetta caused a backward surge of power to the Guddu power plant in Sindh, which in turn caused a cascading effect on the entire national grid, said Water and Power Secretary Younus Dagha.

“It might take a while to fix, hopefully we will be able to control the situation by morning,” he said. “We have restored the Guddu power plant and have also started production from Tarbela.”

The attack near Notal is the third attack on the nation’s energy grid in two weeks in Naseerabad. Later at night, water and power ministry officials said that the Kotri and Uch I power plants had also been restored and that power plants at Tarbela, Mangla and Ghazi Barotha dams had also been turned on, which would result in power being restored by 5 am on Sunday morning. Officials at the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) said that as the restoration work proceeds, Islamabad will get power first, followed by pockets of Lahore, Gujranwala and Faisalabad.

Almost all of Pakistan was in darkness on Saturday night, with no electricity available in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad or Balochistan. Some parts of Sindh still had electricity, but even most parts of Sindh were in darkness.

The breakdown followed daylong media coverage of the dangerously low level of furnace oil stock, which helps run a most of the thermal power plants in the country. But Dagha toldThe Express Tribune around 12:45am that he suspected sabotage. “We cannot rule out sabotage activity. I am in the control room myself and we are all trying to figure out what has happened,” he said. “Our first priority is to bring back this system online.”

Earlier in the night, there had been speculation that the system had tripped due to a decline in power production as the country’s power plants run dangerously low on furnace oil supplies. Dagha ruled out this explanation. “We had pushed up power production to 9,500 MW by evening. Even 800 MW more of hydroelectric power generation was available.”

Power consumption over the last few days has hovering around the 14,000 MW mark. “Before this breakdown we were successfully managing the shortage by carrying out load shedding for industrial consumers,” Dagha said.

The government has shut down natural gas supply to state-owned power plants in Punjab in order to supply gas to the inefficient captive power plants run large textile companies, resulting in approximately one-third of the country’s power generation supply being unavailable to handle the load.

This is not the first time that 500KVA loop has collapsed. But in almost all the cases the cause has been a sudden shutdown of power supply at point that led to chain-reaction throughout the system. A major part of the thermal generation is concentrated in Sindh while the hydel power comes from north and the main load center where most of the consumption takes places lies in heart of Punjab.

People associated with the power industry said this was expected to happen considering the lethargy on part of government officials especially in arranging furnace oil supply.

Government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that most power plants were reliant on production at local refineries for their furnace oil supplies. Domestic refineries only have the capacity to supply 40% of Pakistan’s total refined fuel needs. The remainder is often imported in refined form. However, the country’s largest oil importer, Pakistan State Oil, currently has virtually no inventory left of furnace oil, resulting in a severe shortage of fuel in the country.

The water and power ministry continued to deny that there was a shortage of furnace oil in the country, claiming that the country had a ten-day supply of furnace oil, even as power plants at Jamshoro and Muzaffargarh continued to operate at less than a quarter of their capacity due to low fuel reserves.

PSO’s financial troubles have led banks to refuse lending to the company for its oil import needs. The company has defaulted on Rs46 billion of Letters of Credit (LCs), and international banks have blocked Rs110 billion worth of LCs for PSO. The company will be unable to resume importing oil until it can pay back the Rs46 billion in LCs.

At a meeting of government officials chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it had been decided that the government would release Rs40 billion in funds to state-owned power companies so that they could pay their bills to PSO for fuel. That injection of liquidity could have solved PSO’s immediate cash crunch, but the decision to release the funds was then delayed.

The government tried the alternative path of asking domestic refineries to directly supply power plants in the country, but they do not have the capacity to meet total demand.
Power breakdown: Nationwide blackout – The Express Tribune

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Name of these terrorist is PMLN, who didn't have oil to run power plant

 

[Pakistanisage]

Did not know about outage in ISLAMABAD.

 

[Super Falcon]

Im sure india has played a part in in it buy financing all this in balochistan

 

[Echo_419]

No electricity in more than half the country from what I heard

How are you posting then

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Looks like Raw's work