New Cable Designed To Deter Copper Thieves 668
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."
License scrap cable sales. (Score:5, Interesting)
Removing the market for scrap copper cable might also work. Typically this stuff flows thru metals recycling yards who are only too happy to look the other way when white-van-man shows up with a half ton of scrap copper. If these recyclers. or the smaller number of up-stream buyers, had to have paper work from licensed demolition companies or power utilities tracing the copper they buy you could stop the theft very shortly, without having to wait till every mile of copper is stolen and replaced before your deterrence sets in.
Oh, I Know All About This One. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. :)
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work with some fairly high powered transmitters here and there. Funny thing about large antennas is they tend to be located in lovely remote areas. Generally, the places where no one lives and consequently a great target for moronic thieves. Depending your point of you view you could say it was very fortunate our equipment always needed maintenance or was always failing. Consequently, we spent many events at an uncomfortable distance to the population. Being occupied during the day and night was a great deterrent to douche bags. (I know because after we left the thieves moved in like jackals I'm told)
On one occasion it looked like someone had started to cut the copper from air conditioning unit, but gave up for some unknown reason. Now, what I had been waiting for was an attempted theft at the coax line for any number of transmitters. There was a metric crap ton of this and the word coax does not lend credit to the thickness of these particular runs. Such an act would create an immediate alarm and nor would it be fun to be on the receiving end of the line. The return feedback during the process would disengage the transmission, but not before baking a few fleshy components.
Re:License scrap cable sales. (Score:5, Interesting)
Legalize Drugs... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh. I feel for you. Been there, done it. But I'll tell you this -- we get hit just as frequently at our big 100,000 watt FMs in Birmingham as we do at the remote sites. My colleague at the Clear Channel site right next to our FM on Red Mountain in Birmingham has video of a guy jumping the fence, clipping a handful of copper, and then gracefully jumping back over the fence, into his car and down the hill -- all in less than a minute. By the time the cops arrived, he was long gone.
The cameras at that same Clear Channel site also provided a (somewhat scary) image of a different copper thief shooting out the lights before proceeding with his theft. He got caught, though, because even though he was wearing a mask, you could see his (unmasked) girlfriend crouching in the trees. She was identified and later sang like a canary when she was brought in for questioning.
These guys know how long the police response time is and make sure they can grab and scoot before they can get caught. The deputies who investigated our big theft at a 50,000 watt AM a couple of years ago said the best way to catch them was to set a trap (but even then, they got discouraged because the thieves would spend a few months in jail, then be right back out to steal again).
The deputies told me that on a slow day, they'll actually cruise the neighborhood with the windows down, sniffing for the smell of burning plastic. Whenever thieves steal telecom cable, they often try to burn off the insulation before scrapping it to get a better price.
Re:The problem is thieves. Get rid of them. (Score:5, Interesting)
In case you hadn't noticed, everything [amazon.com] is a felony these days.
But I agree that a second conviction for theft should carry a very long sentence. Many crimes are crimes of passion, committed under circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated - and many more "crimes" are not really crimes at all - but theft has real victims and thieves have a very high recidivism rate. If there is one crime that we should punish with very long vacations from polite society, it should be theft.
Re:This won't work (Score:5, Interesting)
We have signs like that. Our signs also point out that stealing from a federally-licensed facility could result in a federal investigation. Shoot, the Birmingham Police have their antennas on one of our big FM towers, and the thieves DON'T CARE. They get hit all the time.
The thieves will destroy the cable to determine if it's clad or pure copper, then throw aside the stuff they don't want. It still leaves *ME* with a ton of cleanup and repair to do.
That's what I love about this crap: they steal $20 worth of copper and do $10,000 of damage in the process. They'll take the three ground cables from a 700' tower (worth about $10 for scrap) -- and those grounds are what keep lightning out of my equipment. A storm rolls along and I get hammered, while they sit back with their six pack of beer and think they've done well for themselves. (Whimper.)
Re:Theif soultions (Score:4, Interesting)
More than likely though they just find other sources of copper to steal from or just steal more of it in more sophisticated operations.
You overestimate the intelligence of thieves. The word is out that cable is valuable so the average thief will carry right on stealing it.
The fact that he doesn't get paid much just means he won't take the day off to spend money. He'll be out stealing cable next day instead. Net result: even more cable being stolen than before.
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:4, Interesting)
Plutonium is only mildly radioactive thanks to its long half life. Cesium-137 would be a far better deterrent.
Re:The problem is thieves. Get rid of them. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [turtlezen.com]) 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.
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:4, Interesting)
The last bit is why it's increasingly being made illegal for scrap dealers to purchase burnt cable.
Re:Used by hams for decades (Score:5, Interesting)
Not much current??? Ummm... better double check that. The US power line infrastructure is stretched to the breaking point. Most 21KV and up lines are running near their max rated current.
To the GP -- Aluminum is much more conductive than steel, and in power lines the cables are large enough that they have enough tensile strength to easily make the spans that power lines are designed for. Aluminum is lower loss than steel for 60 Hz. I've been making ham antennas out of CopperWeld since 1972, usually #12 solid, sometimes #10 solid. It is nassssty to cut. I use nail nippers these days, or a hack saw if I don't have a nail nipper handy. Small bolt cutters would be good. #12 soft-drawn copper doesn't stand up to icing all that well for larger antennas. CopperWeld is much stronger. (CopperWeld is the Cooper trademark, other vendors make copper-clad steel wire.) I think CopperWeld dates from around "The War", as my parents generation called it -- WW II.
Re:Theif soultions (Score:2, Interesting)
unfortunately not. the classic example for tragedy of the commons meets finite resource is the economics of the fishing industry.
catch rates remain stable in time right up until the point the population completely collapses. the increased effort to collect the same tonnage is balanced by better sonar and trawling technology which allows you place your nets exactly where the fish are so that you can collect every last one. (until the point the population completely collapses and you have to target another species)
fun differential equations to play with as long as you can put it out of your mind that it's real, a good portion of the world's protein source relies on it, and once it is gone all those people will have to go somewhere else for their meat. (may be a good time to get into the squirrel farming business)
Re:Theif soultions (Score:5, Interesting)
Also by the time the thief discovers the cable isn't valuable the damage has already been done. As happens with telephone cables. Since the typical thief can't tell the difference between copper and fibre cable before cutting it.
Same thing in the US (Score:4, Interesting)
Same reason too (strength and cost). When you are talking shorter run, like in a house, where weight doesn't matter and voltage is low you go copper. The lower resistance is well worth it. However for the long haul runs aluminium wins the day, and steel at the core to strengthen it. The higher impedance does lead to a bit more loss, but then you are talking as much as half a million volts so that equalizes things a bit.
Re:Are your numbers right? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I'm not sure that works as well as you would imagine. Theft is still a problem in Denmark, where we do have a welfare state (of course, one should really do a comparison of Northern European countries, and try to correlate the degree of welfare state to the crime rate, but even there, ause and effect might be hard to tell apart). It seems to be mostly drug addicts and Eastern European gangs doing the theft.
Of course, if we are talking about the price of a welfare state, be sure to include the lesser amount of work hours being produced. Higher taxes means less incentive to work, and higher social benefits means lesser incentive to work. Even though people are not only economic creatures, that reduced incentive does have an effect on the amount of work people are willing to do.
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of them don't care. It is pretty obvious when someone is a copper thief.
I think anything less than full photo registration of sellers, and a bureaucracy to make sure sure no scap is being "laundered", is about the only way to stop it. However that would probably cost more than the copper thieves do.
Re:What a load of drivel (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:Are your numbers right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Under a capitalist state each individual company is out to increase its own profits without giving any regard to the population, environment or economy as a whole...
As a result, each company individually tries to reduce its costs by reducing the number of human workers required.
Eventually you end up with mass unemployment, and in the absense of a welfare state those people have no choice but to turn to crime or die.
The companies also shoot themselves in the foot because with everyone being unemployed, there is no longer anyone who can afford to buy their products.
Of course, under capitalism people may well know this, but capitalism discourages working for the common good and anyone who tries to do so is likely to be driven out of business by those who are more ruthless.
Without checks and balances, capitalism is doomed to self destruct.
And why should people still have to work if one day machines can do it better? Just so the rich and powerful can feel superior?
Because under a capitalist system, someone who isn't working wont make any money... Giving out money to people who haven't worked to earn it is welfare.
Re:Same thing in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This won't work (Score:5, Interesting)
Google the Bastoy prison in Norway. It looks like a damn summer camp, where the inmates can go swimming, cook their own food (they're given knives!), watch TV. Hell, their "cells" look more spacious than my old dorm room.
Criminals sent there have some of the lowest recidivism rates in the entire world. It works because the Norwegians believe in rehabilitation instead of retribution.
Re:This won't work (Score:4, Interesting)
How about FIX the problem by requiring all scrap yards to hold scrap cable for 7 days before payout and require a real drivers license or ID. the scrapyard then posts the cable turned in to a police website so the cops can cross reference a theft with a scrap drop off, and then wait for t he guy to show up to collect his payout.
but no, we cant do that. Just like how we cant require this to happen at pawn shops.
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:4, Interesting)
"My colleague at the Clear Channel site right next to our FM on Red Mountain in Birmingham has video of a guy jumping the fence, clipping a handful of copper, and then gracefully jumping back over the fence, into his car and down the hill -- all in less than a minute. By the time the cops arrived, he was long gone."
If the thief only got a handful of copper and he was escaping by car, what is the chance that it actually cost him about as much in fuel and car maintenance to steal that copper as he got in scrap value? At the very least he would have made considerably more per hour to work in McDonalds.
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just coat them with plutonium (Score:4, Interesting)
There are many such noted incidents, but there are many that go unnoticed. A worker at a French nuclear plant [iaea.org] bought a watch using steel pins mixed with a Co-60 source one of these idiots stole, and this was only found when he wore it to work where radiation monitoring is required. No one knows who was exposed or killed earlier in the supply chain.
As far as the poster blaming Brazil below, this happens here [nrc.gov] in the good ol' USA as well.
And this will keep happening, as long as laws are not enforced and thieves continue to have such a willing market in disreputable scrap metal dealers
More than the guilty parties have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in every single one of these incidents. Scrap metal thieves literally kill people.
Re:Theif soultions (Score:4, Interesting)