Is the power outage due to the fire? If so, what was the fire due to? How far back do we need to go on this? the Big Bang?
If we've learned anything from the California fires, the culprit will be global warming.
London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
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Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it be a national security issue? Military airports are working fine. National security doesn't rely on civilian airports. And communications networks aren't disrupted or anything. This isn't enabling terrorism. It's absolutely a huge economic issue. Economic-political. But I'm not seeing a national security angle here.
" [...] national security is widely understood to include also non-military dimensions, such as the security from terrorism, minimization of crime, economic security, energy security, environmental security, food security, and cyber-security. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security Large-scale issues that impact the economy are typically under the "national security" umbrella. It's a term that uses the broa…
While I agree with you, this is a huge issue with the term "security" and what it means to "provide security" as a government, because at some point almost everything can be labeled as a "national security threat" if it happens to be against the political desiderata of any one controlling said governments at a certain moment in time.
I feel like this sort of "security reflex" only got worst after 9/11, it was already there before even before that point but starting with Bush jr. it cascading into lots and lots of non-military related areas.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#93Is the power outage due to the fire? If so, what was the fire due to? How far back do we need to go on this? the Big Bang?
Old oil transformer. The insulation breaks down in old transformers. It happens sometimes. No need to involve Russian conspiracy theories at this point in time... :-)
"How to Prevent Substation Fires": https://www.oilbarriers.com/blog/suppress-substation-fires/
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#94Funny, how we're all suddenly privy to highly classified information.
Yesterday, if you'd have publicly shared this one substation is enough to take down Heathrow for an entire day, you'd have been disappeared by the British spooks for sharing extremely sensitive information threatening national security and you'd probably end up behind bars for over a decade.
Today, we all just know because it happened to catch fire, exposing the flaw.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heathrow is a significant part of the UK economy, what is with the dismissive attitude? I don't imagine an american being so dismissive about JFK being taken offline.
> Heathrow is a significant part of the UK economy Is it, really ? From Heathrow's own website[1], so we can expect figures on the "generous" side: "Heathrow Airport is expected to contribute approximately £4.7bn to the UK economy " This incident started somewhere around midnight and is currently estimated to be resolved by 15:00. So let's round that up to "one day". £4.7bn divided by 365 is £12.8m Compared to say, t…
Does that count only the actual airport? It doesn't count the potential business travellers contributing to the economy in different ways. Like if half of the financial sector were due to arrive at Heathrow, where would that be in the analysis?
Just to downplay the importance of Heathrow through numbers is a bit absurd.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure No. Its not. Its the fact that the decades of under-investment in power distribution infrastructure is coming home to roost. Its no secret there's little to no "fat" in the UK grid system. Hence it has difficulty coping with black-swan events such as this. Anyone who buys datacentre space in London knows the reason prices have gone through th…
So .. why are people trying to build new datacentre space in London rather than somewhere a bit further away and less expensive? Easier to put the datacentre near the power and run some fiber rather than the other way round, surely? The expense is unpleasant, but the money has to come from somewhere, and the user paying is easier to justify than all the other bill-payers collectively or the taxpayer.
Probably because of easier access to qualified workforce.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
You keep saying “No it’s not” and then describing exactly what most people would call “a single point of failure” and “a national security issue” in a lot more words.
> You keep saying “No it’s not” and then describing exactly what most people would call “a single point of failure” and “a national security issue” in a lot more words. What are you on about ? Its not a national security issue. Full stop. There are many other airports in the London area and elesewhere in the UK. Heathrow is a civilian airport, not a military one. 99% of air cargo to the UK does NOT come to Heathrow.…
"National security site" is not a synonym for "military installation."
It means "critical infrastructure whose failure causes significant adverse effects."
The UK's main airport is absolutely that.
Your quote about 99% of air cargo not coming through Heathrow is made-up nonsense. The correct figure is closer to around 50% by volume and 70% by value.
https://www.heathrow.com/company/cargo
It's a major, major hub, not just for the UK but Europe, the US, and Rest of World.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
That and the sunken ship full of explosives, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery#/media/F...
I can think of a very quick way to make those explosives safe!
It's enough explosive to cause a 2m high tsunami in the estuary, iirc. Not an option.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#99This is way worse due to London airports' lack of spare capacity. They should have built Thames Estuary Airport a long time ago.
I think one of the blockers to this is a very high risk of bird strikes.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
If by "national security issue" we mean "can the UK move military aircraft and important people" then no, Heathrow isn't key at all. There are other airbases and airports. If we mean that a long outage would have economic impact and is hard to find the capacity elsewhere, then yes. As per grandparent post "take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel".
Yeah well, not everything that annoys people and loses bussinesses money is a "national security issue", no matter how far the US overton window shifted on that matter.
A core goal of national security is protecting critical civilian infrastructure.
Always has been, always will be.