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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.
Steal more copper cable. Less monetary damage in goods loss, more damage paying people to replace stolen cable.
It might stop them from being able to get money from the cable, but it's not like it's going to deter them from stealing the cable in the first place under the assumption that the cable is copper.
Copper clad steel has been used by hams for decades. It is most effective at radio frequencies, where the "skin effect" causes the current flow to exist primarily in the outermost regions of the cable. 50 or 60 Hz AC current is not high enough frequency to have much of a skin effect, so it will consequently be a poor conductor compared to solid copper. There's no doubt that it is harder to cut, though.
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.
A glance at this graph will give you a swift education on why copper theft has increased recently.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
As someone who has been hit repeatedly by these morons, a few thoughts. Radio in general offers a very attractive target to these thieves, especially (believe it or not) older installations like AM radio stations. (At low frequencies like AM, the tower itself is actually the antenna -- that's why there are insulators in the guy wires -- and the tower field is laced with gobs and gobs of soft copper that acts as the ground plane.)
1. Copper-clad steel is nothing new. Some of this is just marketroid hype (though to be fair, I don't think anyone has ever made clad *telcom* cable before). But other types of clad conductors have been common for some time -- not just to deter theft, but because of the price of copper.
2. The real problem is the scrap metal dealers. You can't tell me that they're not suspicious when a couple of teenage guys come dragging in the core from a big honkin' three phase HVAC unit. But THEY want the copper even worse than the thieves, because they turn around and sell it in ton lots at a huge profit.
3. Copper is considerably more conductive than steel. We can get away with it at RF frequencies because of skin effect (i.e., the signal travels through the "skin" of the conductor, rather than the center), but it's not a perfect solution. It's much more difficult to work with and it's easy to accidentally strip off the copper cladding, leaving you with far less desirable steel at the connection point.
4. These thieves really are morons, and yes, most are repeat offenders. They even talk to one another in jail and compare notes. When we were hammered in February of 2010, the deputies who investigated our incident told us that they even knew who most of these people were. We had video cameras and they scoured the images to get a clue as to who it was.
But sometimes I have to laugh. One of our FM stations here is in the huge metropolis of Pumpkin Center, Alabama, which defines "middle of nowhere." The house up the (dirt) road from the transmitter site has been hit repeatedly; I drove to the site to do routine maintenance a couple of years ago and noted that the air conditioner had been ransacked. But they won't mess with the FM site.
I guess the fact that our landlady likes to go out and there and shoot with her boyfriend gives them pause. The sight of all those targets with bullet holes all around the center makes them think twice. :)
Then some thieves tried to cut the gigantic, 6" copper coax going to our 100,000 FM in North Central Alabama. I posted a note that said, "Dear morons, if you try to cut this line, please have your life insurance paid up .... "
They've stolen our grounding several times since, but they haven't touched that big coax again. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
A partial solution that seems to be working here in Oregon: for all scrap sales over a certain (relatively low) amount, the scrap dealer has to mail you a check rather than paying cash on the spot. Having to provide a working mailing address deters thieves, and the time delay discourages the druggies.
Really? Then you must be the ONLY person alive not to have. With so many laws on the books, it's impossible NOT to have unknowingly broken one of them, whether it's your dog mating with another dog within 1,500 feet of a public school (California) or other such stupidity.
We had the city pass a really stupid law - because kids were holding on to the back of buses during the winter and "sledding", they passed a law making it illegal to hold on to or grasp any part of a vehicle in motion inside city limits. So how are you supposed to steer?
Ditto with the law they passed trying to ban massage parlors by defining massage as the physical manipulation of any part of another persons body - making everything from handshakes to helping your kid blow her nose.
It's a safe bet you've broken a few stupid laws.
Vancouvers supervised sites more than pay for themselves just in reduced emergency room care, and when the feds tried to shut them down, the Supremes ruled that it would have been both an infringement on the provinces' right to administer their health-care programs, and an infringement on the individuals' right to security of the person by putting them at increased risk of dying.
As someone who has never been into recreational pharmacology, I say just legalize it and deal with it - it's a social, not legal, problem. Or stop being hypocrites and ban alcohol, tobacco, and every other product proven to affect brain function, including coffee, tea, sugar, breakfast cereals, any product containing corn or corn by-products, chocolate (don't you DARE!!!) etc.
Seriously - the war on drugs is hypocritical. It's also one that cannot ever be won. Seriously, the way to reduce drug use is to set an example, and to keep an open, non-judgmental attitude when talking to people who chose to use drugs - not have a bunch of drug-addicted politicians pass laws against it.
Maybe instead of making cables harder to steal we should make citizens that don't want to steal them...
At a certain point having a "welfare state" might become cheaper overall. Then most of them won't bother to steal if you provide them with food, shelter and tv/"youtube"/game consoles/parks.
Not a big difference if you're going to put those you catch in prisons where they are fed and housed...
Of course you'd also need to fix the education side to it, compulsory education for kids, free education (maybe even up to undergraduate level), free meals for school-kids. That way you don't get stuck with 20% or more of your population being under-educated and not very competitive with the rest of the world in terms of cost/ability.
I think they are more throwing a fit because he crams them into dark green korean war surplus tents in the 115 degree Arizona heat with no cooling and limited water. I think they are more throwing a fit because he also uses hot boxes as additional punishment in those conditions. I think they are more throwing a fit because he is literally running concentration camps here in the US.
Wish I had mod points. Pity the social policy says you're shit unless you can pay for your health and education. A healthy and educated population wouldn't need to steal $10 worth of copper. Side effect from screwing the population.
Transmission lines in the national electricity grid here (India) consist of steel core for strength with an outer aluminum layer for conductivity. This solution has been in place from the time electrification started in India.
To Share Is To care
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2620558&cid=38698508
That said, perhaps they should also do a test of the teachers, perhaps the direct reason for the difference is Finland has better teachers ;).
BUT even so Finland might have better teachers because the teachers were once students themselves, and if most of the students were well-educated, then most of the teachers would be too...
Whereas if you have crappy students each generation and most teachers coming from the "crappier end" of very unevenly educated students, you're not going to get very good results.
In a democracy if you leave too many people "behind", unless you're at the very top, you're still eventually going to pay for it one way or another, as long as those behind can still vote ;).
Because we have open borders. People from former eastbloc states, who do not have any social welfare, come in and steal the copper. This must look like a harsh statement but the statistics do not lie; 90% of copper theft in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium is performed by people from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria etc. (I know, missing reference)