https://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education/solarstorms-mat-stein
short story:
- Transformers (among other components) get fried in the right kind of solar flare; immediate result is grid down in the region. With a large enough flare, this could be hundreds of miles, up to half the country.
- Replacing transformers takes on the order of **years** (difficult supply chain, reliance on foreign countries, etc.)
- When the grid is down, nuclear plants melt down if not powered by backup generators
- There is **some** diesel on hand to power the above for a bit, but not for long enough (remember Fukushima?) ...and imagine trying to truck diesel to dozens of plants around potentially thousands of miles of country that is at the moment fully without power for potentially weeks or months and probably under martial law.
We've had solar storms of this magnitude before. look up the Carrington Event. At the time our electrical infrastructure was in its infancy so "not much happened". If that happened today, you'd be looking at the picture I described above.
