Did Sean Gorman's maps show the cascading vulnerability in Ohio?

Mon Aug 18 20:55:26 UTC 2003

On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 at 08:28:44PM -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
> So, the US Government wants to classify Sean Gorman's student project.
> The question is did Mr. Gorman's maps divulge the vulnerability in the
> East Coast power grid that resulted in the blackouts this week?
> 
> Would it be better to know about these vulnerabilities, and do something
> about them; or is it better to keep them secret until they fail in a
> catastrophic way?

And what would you or the public holding these maps do about them? I
have a better plan, instead of releasing it to the public, release it
to these ignorant bandwagon activists so they can scream and shout
about how these 'dangerous' things are too close to people. That will
solve the problem of sending us back to the stone age by uprooting
current 'dangerous' facilities (oh say, like INDIAN POINT or something
just as useful), or there's always terrorists willing to pay for these
maps.

--snip--
The North American Energy Reliability Council, or NERC, which is
charged with assessing the dependability of the electric grid system,
has pointed to a section of the loop in Ohio as the likely point of
origin for Thursday's blackout. 

``That's the center of the focus,'' NERC chief Michehl Gent said.
``This has been a problem for years and there have been all sorts of
plans to make it more reliable.'' 
--snip--

Oh wait...someone was already doing something about it behind the
scenes, but naaaaah, their work is meaningless because since I've
never heard anything about this (perhaps because I DON'T WORK FOR A
POWER GENERATING ORGANIZATION OR RELIABILITY COUNCIL) let's release
the map to some couple million unqualified individuals so they can
scrutinize it and offer no reasonable or primarily negative input.

Have a happy angst-filled low-voltage day.