Re: I-5 corridor - Lack of Intermodal
Author: mook
Date: 10-04-2015 - 13:28
The loss of industrial capacity in the US could become a defense issue (in limited situations it already has). A recent report on likely damage from electromagnetic pulse mentioned several times that nobody makes large power transformers and switchgear in the US any more. That, among other things, is why the lead time for purchasing such things is well over a year, and none are kept "in stock" for standby because of inventory cost issues for the deregulated power plant operators.
So ... if something were to happen like the lightning storm that hit us while I was in college, that fried a transformer at a local (not nuke, but big) power plant resulting in significant power problems for a month or so while a new one was procured ... the delay would be a year or more. Expand that to a regional scale (for a wide-area blackout scenario triggered by EMP or something else that fries some major pieces) and you have a national disaster.
Could it be that Just In Time might have gone just a bit too far? Not that the unreliability of current railroad service helps matters any ...