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New Cable Designed To Deter Copper Thieves
Hugh Pickens writes "Pervasive thefts of copper wire from under the streets of Fresno, California have prompted the city to seal thousands of its manhole covers with concrete. In Picher, Oklahoma, someone felled the town's utility poles with chain saws, allowing thieves to abscond with 3,000 feet of wire while causing a blackout. The theft of copper cables costs U.S. companies $60 million a year and the FBI says it considers theft of copper wire to be a threat to the nation's baseline ability to function. But now PC World reports that a U.S. company has developed a new cable design that removes almost all the copper from cables in a bid to deter metal thieves. Unlike conventional cables made from solid copper, the GroundSmart Copper Clad Steel Cable consists of a steel core bonded to a copper outer casing, forming an equally effective but far less valuable cable by exploiting the corrosion-resistance of copper with the conductive properties of steel. 'Companies trying to protect their copper infrastructure have been going to extreme measures to deter theft, many of which are neither successful nor cost effective,' says CommScope vice president, Doug Wells. 'Despite efforts like these, thieves continue to steal copper because of its rising value. The result is costly damage to networks and growing service disruptions.' The GroundSmart Copper Clad Steel cable is the latest technical solution to the problem of copper theft, which has included alternatives like cable etching to aid tracing of stolen metal and using chemicals that leave stains detectable under ultra-violet light. However the Copper Clad Steel strikes at the root of the problem by making the cable less susceptible to theft by both increasing the resistance to cutting and drastically decreasing the scrap value."
Eventually, the thieves will take care of themselves.
Something like 70% of copper thieves have been convicted of theft once before. If there was a death penalty for thieves - and really, why not for all felonies? - this problem would quickly end.
But no, we have to worry about their feelings.
Steal more copper cable. Less monetary damage in goods loss, more damage paying people to replace stolen cable.
Why stop here? Why not death penalty even if you get one little tiny hamburger. And his/her relatives in prison. For life.
I like it, though I'd execute the children, too. A crime-free society is less than a generation away.
We think much alike, you and I.
Pirates use the copper in the lines to steal trillions of dollars worth of copyrighted materials. By stealing the copper, you are stealing the copyrighted materials that were transferring across them. Since we can't determine exactly how much copyrighted material was in the copper at the time, we need to assume it's at least 10 million dollars worth per foot. Since we'll never be able to recover this money from thieves desperate enough to steal copper, we simply need to authorize the RIAA and MPAA to shoot anyone suspected of stealing copper on sight.
No, we don't need more Big Government looking over the shoulders of our job creators. The market will take care of itself if left alone.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
They must be very good at NetHack.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Thief: Let's steal copper cables!
GSmart: Let's steel copper cables!
Use lead instead of steel. Don't incorporate it into the wire, just have a guy standing there with a semi-automatic lead dispenser, and when thieves try to steal your copper, you can lead them out.
Another scrapyard karma story:
Many, many years ago my mother worked at an iron foundry. One day she transferred a call from a scrap dealer to the president, and afterward he told her the story. The scrap dealer had called to ask if the foundry really had sent these guys to sell the pig ingots back that they had just shipped the previous afternoon, and the answer was of course "no." The dealer knew exactly who to call because several of the ingots still had his chalkmarks indicating which foundry he had sold them to!
Seems these enterprising thieves broke into the back gate from the railroad tracks, saw a large number of shiny pig ingots stacked on the back dock, and thought they were valuable (probably not knowing that pig iron was going for about $20/ton.) They must have sweated all night carrying these forty pound pigs a block and a half down the railroad tracks, then up a railroad bridge embankment, to their waiting truck. The scrap dealer also told the president that these guys had broken the springs on their truck by overloading it. Since he was keeping the thieves busy outside by having them unload the ingots from their busted truck, he asked the foundry president if he should call the police for him. The president was laughing by this time and said as long as he got his iron back, they'd been punished enough. "Hell, if they hadn't stolen from us, I'd hire them! Nobody around here works that hard!"
John
I had a can labelled "unleaded petrol" stolen out of my shed a few weeks ago. It was full of diesel. I really, really hope somebody tried to use it as petrol without checking. :)