THE Government is secretly testing emergency blackout plans, it has emerged.
Secret documents reveal major fears among government officials over how Britain will cope with outages that could last seven days.
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Leaked material from Programme Yarrow – the plan for dealing with national blackouts – suggest all sectors including food, water and transport could be “severely disrupted” in a “worst case scenario”.
The confidential papers obtained by The Guardian newspaper show how the elderly and kids will be prioritised in such an emergency.
Brits with caring responsibilities will also be first to be reached by teams who would also provide emergency shelter.
A source told the paper: “The fact they’re talking about it now means they have a real concern it could happen.”
The programme prepares for a situation in winter where power is unavailable without any warning.
But a renewed sense of urgency with the programme’s effectiveness has been triggered by fears over the security of energy supplies.
The programme is different from National Grid’s scheme which could see blackouts occur on the coldest days between 4pm and 7pm in January and February.
Britain has been thrown into an energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine, with millions being hammered by soaring energy bills.
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Government departments and councils across the country have been involved in the stress testing of Yarrow in recent days, the paper added.
Programme Yarrow has been in place since 2021 to offer a roadmap of how the country could respond if National Grid went down.
Lightning strikes or flooding at a substation are outlined as potential reasons for a blackout in the “official sensitive” documents.
But a hostile attack on Britain’s infrastructure – similar to that of Russia’s attack on the Nord Stream pipeline – is also mentioned.
The impact of a blackout could be further complicated by Met Office warnings that Britain may be entering a cold winter, the documents add.
The “official sensitive” documents also warn how communication systems could be knocked out in a blackout.
It would mean just analogue FM radio stations would work and the Beeb would only broadcast Radio 2 and Radio 4 by generators.
The plans suggest 60 percent of electricity demand will be met between day 2 and 7 when households and businesses will be given “intermittent access” to ration supply.
Energy regulator Ofgem and National Grid would restore 100 percent of electricity demand after a week even in a worst-case scenario.
Programme Yarrow is a more severe response than plans by National Grid to perform rolling blackouts to save on energy supplies.
It is not clear who would lead emergency response efforts in a long term energy outage.
A government spokesman said: “As a responsible government, it is right that we plan for all potential scenarios and work with industry to prepare and exercise robust contingency plans.”
