Archive for the 'Infrastructure' Category
Japan’s ‘Throwaway’ Nuclear Workers
July 18th, 2011Via: Reuters: A decade and a half before it blew apart in a hydrogen blast that punctuated the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was the scene of an earlier safety crisis. Then, as now, a small army of transient workers was put to work to […]
Greg’s Cable Map
July 15th, 2011Via: cablemap.info: Greg’s Cable Map is an attempt to consolidate all the available information about the undersea communications infrastructure. The initial data was harvested from Wikipedia, and further information was gathere by simply googling and transcribing as much data as possible into a useful format, namely a rich geocoded format.
Upcoming 405 Closure Could Trigger a Domino Effect of Gridlock
July 10th, 2011Here’s one for your It’s A Good Thing That The Terrorists Are Too Stupid To Think Of This file folder. Via: Los Angeles Times: Officials encourage drivers to stay home, warning of possible cascading logjams on alternative routes. Marcella and Richard Tyler may be in the path of a traffic hurricane many fear will whip […]
Montana: Ruptured Pipeline Spills ‘Unknown’ Amount of Oil Into Yellowstone River
July 3rd, 2011Via: New York Times: An ExxonMobil pipeline running under the Yellowstone River in south central Montana ruptured late Friday, spilling crude oil into the river and forcing evacuations. The pipeline burst about 10 miles east of Billings, coating parts of the Yellowstone River that run past Laurel — a town of about 6,500 people downstream […]
Earthquake Caused Structural Damage at Fukushima Plant Before Tsunami Hit
July 3rd, 2011This piece includes interviews with workers who saw severe damage to reactor facilities that was caused by the quake itself, before the tsunami hit. Via: Atlantic Wire: It’s been one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear disaster: How much of the damage did the March 11 earthquake inflict on Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors in the […]
Toshiso Kosako: Come the Harvest Season in the Fall, There Will Be Chaos
July 2nd, 2011You probably know that rice has semi religious significance throughout Asia, but you may not know that Japanese are particularly weird about their rice. To Japanese, it’s not really rice unless it’s rice from Japan. In order to avoid international trade sanctions, Japan imports rice, but the rice is generally not consumed in Japan. Most […]
Flood Berm Collapses at Nebraska Nuclear Plant
June 27th, 2011Via: AP: A berm holding the flooded Missouri River back from a Nebraska nuclear power station collapsed early Sunday, but federal regulators said they were monitoring the situation and there was no danger. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station shut down in early April for refueling, and there is no water inside the plant, the U.S. […]
Fukushima Residents’ Urine Now Radioactive
June 27th, 2011Via: Japan Times: More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday. Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been releasing […]
Power-Grid Experiment
June 26th, 2011Via: AP: A yearlong experiment with America’s electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers — and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast. “A lot of people are going to have things break and they’re not going to know why,” said Demetrios Matsakis, […]
‘Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind’
June 16th, 2011Via: Al Jazeera: Scientific experts believe Japan’s nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public. “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. Japan’s 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled […]
