Archive for the 'Infrastructure' Category
Electric Utility Executives Worry About Solar Panels
October 28th, 2013Via: San Francisco Chronicle: Sitting on a rooftop, soaking up sun, the humble solar panel may not look like a threat to a multibillion-dollar industry. But some electric utility executives say it is. They even have a name for the nightmare scenario solar could create – the “death spiral.” They fear solar’s rapid spread across […]
China: ‘Unprecedented’ Policy Changes Ahead
October 28th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: Chinese Politburo member Yu Zhengsheng said reforms to be discussed at a Communist Party meeting next month will be unprecedented, adding to signs that leaders are resolved to spur far-reaching policy changes. Yu’s comments, made in a speech at a forum to promote relations with Taiwan, were reported by the official Xinhua News […]
Mexico Towns Lose Power in Suspected Cartel Sabotage
October 28th, 2013Via: AFP: Unidentified assailants armed with guns and Molotov cocktails attacked power stations in a violence-torn western Mexican state Sunday, leaving 11 towns without electricity in a suspected drug cartel attack. The interior ministry said in a statement that national power company equipment, six gas stations and a convenience store were targeted in 11 towns […]
Help Wanted in Fukushima: Low Pay, High Risks and Gangsters
October 25th, 2013Via: Reuters: Tetsuya Hayashi went to Fukushima to take a job at ground zero of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. He lasted less than two weeks. Hayashi, 41, says he was recruited for a job monitoring the radiation exposure of workers leaving the plant in the summer of 2012. Instead, when he turned up […]
Level 3 Outage Disrupts East Coast Internet Traffic
October 19th, 2013Via: Wall Street Journal: Internet users from Brooklyn to Philadelphia suffered slow to nonexistent service Saturday after equipment at a New York-area network hub broke down, disrupting service for several hours. A spokesman for the Internet service provider Level 3 Communications Inc. said technicians were working quickly to fix the outage, which cascaded down to […]
Japan Finally Seeks International Help with Fukushima Crisis
October 9th, 2013Via: CBS: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan is open to receiving overseas help to contain widening radioactive water leaks at the crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima, with leaks and mishaps reported almost daily. Abe made the comments Sunday in a speech at an international science forum in Kyoto in western Japan. “We are wide […]
GE and AT&T Partner to Make Engines, Trains and Turbines Cellular-Capable
October 9th, 2013What could possibly go wrong? Via: All Things D: General Electric is announcing a partnership with AT&T on Wednesday to add wireless capabilities to a wide range of the company’s industrial machines. The deal — an expansion of the existing partnership between the two companies — is designed to equip millions of jet engines, locomotives, […]
Jellyfish Force Nuclear Plant Shutdown in Sweden
October 2nd, 2013Via: AP: It wasn’t a tsunami but it had the same effect: A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors to shut down — a phenomenon that marine biologists say could become more common. Operators of the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in southeastern Sweden had to scramble reactor number three on […]
Directed Energy Device Disables Vehicles
September 16th, 2013The same company is developing, “High altitude electromagnetic pulse weapons.” Via: Telegraph: An energy beam that can be fired to disable vehicles and electronic devices has been developed by Nato scientists. The device uses an intense pulse of electromagnetic energy that can be directed at a moving vehicle to interfere with the electronics on board. […]
Cambridge University Doomers
September 13th, 2013Via: Independent: Some of Britain’s finest minds are drawing up a “doomsday list” of catastrophic events that could devastate the world, pose a threat to civilisation and might even lead to the extinction of the human species. Leading scholars have established a centre for the study of “existential risk” which aims to present politicians and […]
