The author argues that the western world's reliance on a "weak and dilapidated energy and communications network infrastructures" is a recipe for disaster.
Nano-based sensors and nano-engineered materials could transform the power grid, according to experts speaking at a symposium on energy and nanotechnology.
America's critical transportation, power, and communications systems remain quite vulnerable and lack funds to remedy that.
The revelation that a computer worm disabled a safety system in a US nuclear power station in January has led to fresh calls for security on electricity grids to be overhauled. Experts say much of the grid's critical infrastructure is too accessible to the virus-ridden public internet.
Even before the recent blackout in Northeast U.S., spending on generators and solar power plants capable of providing all home power was on the rise.
The self-healing grid, one that monitors itself, measures itself and even takes corrective action to eliminate reliability problems, may be in the near future.
Jeremy Rifkin proposes setting up a decentralized energy system, similar to the internet, to reduce vulnerability to blackouts.
Fred Kaplan argues that the recent blackout in the U.S. clearly indicates a problem with the archaic energy grid but it also reveals "the system's?and society's?resilience" to terrorist attack.
While energy experts differed on the precise cause of today's power blackout, they were in agreement that the extensive failure betrayed the age of the region's transmission system and its struggles to keep up with demand.
Scientists and engineers with the National Research Council warned the White House and Congress about the vulnerability of the power grid as recently as November, saying nationwide weaknesses needed to be repaired ? and fast.