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California Quake Test Shows Promise of New Building Code

Thu, 2012-04-19 14:15 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - April 19, 2012

Researchers place a model hospital on a shake table to assess the structure’s ability to withstand earthquake; in accordance with California latest building code, base isolators, which are rubber bearings intended to absorb the shock of the motion, were installed underneath the structure; the hospital passed the 6.7-magnitude and 8.8-magnitude tests with flying colors.

Last Tuesday, engineers from the University of California, San Diego conducted an ambitious and successful earthquake simulation, with what some called “boring” results.

Engineered had constructed a 5-story building, complete with a hospital operating room, an elevator, a kitchen filled with glassware. They also added a heavy air-conditioning unit to the roof. The building, built to California’s top earthquake codes, was then placed on top of a shake table, a device for shaking structural models or building components with a wide range of simulated ground motions, including reproductions of recorded earthquake time-histories.

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California Nuclear Plant Shut Indefinitely Amid Hunt to Find Cause of Problems

Sat, 2012-04-07 08:24 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Janine Rees

      

The power plant has been shut down since this winter, when a small amount of radioactive gas escaped.

CNN - April 6, 2012
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Anti-nuclear activists warn of a potential environmental catastrophe
  • The San Onofre nuclear plant has been shut down since radioactive gas escaped
  • Officials have said there's no harm to the public health, but can't identify problem's cause
  • The head of the NRC says the plant won't restart until a cause and plan is put forward

(CNN) -- A large Southern California nuclear plant is out of commission indefinitely, and will remain so until there is an understanding of what caused problems at two of its generators and an effective plan to address the issues, the nation's top nuclear regulator said Friday.

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Canopy-Forming Kelps as California’s Coastal Dosimeter: 131I from Damaged Japanese Reactor Measured in Macrocystis Pyrifera

Sat, 2012-03-31 22:13 — Kathy Gilbeaux

                           This study indicates Kelp could act as a coastal dosimeter for California.

                  

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Cracked Steam Generator Tubes at San Onofre

Fri, 2012-03-30 22:41 — Kathy Gilbeaux

by Dave Lochbaum - allthingsnuclear.org - March 27, 2012

Leaks in San Onofre Unit 3 and Unit 2:

On February 18, 2011, operators restarted the Unit 3 pressurized water reactor (PWR) at the San Onofre nuclear plant in southern California following its sixteenth refueling outage. During the outage, workers replaced both of the reactor’s steam generators, which are large cylindrical containers that are partially filled with water.

At 3:05 pm on January 31, 2012 – less than a year later – radiation alarms alerted the control room operators that water was leaking through one or more of the tubes in one of the steam generators on Unit 3. They estimated the leak rate to be 82 gallons per day.

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Water Scarcity in California's Bay-Delta Necessitates “Hard Decisions”

Fri, 2012-03-30 19:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

California's Bay-Delta water supply area // Source: usgs.gov

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - March 30, 2012

Simultaneously attaining a reliable water supply for California and protecting and rehabilitating its Bay-Delta ecosystem cannot be realized until better planning can identify how trade-offs between these two goals will be managed when water is limited, says a new report from the National Research Council.  Recent efforts have been ineffective in meeting these goals because management is distributed among many agencies and organizations, which hinders development and implementation of an integrated, comprehensive plan.  Additionally, it is impossible to restore the delta habitat to its pre-disturbance state because of the extensive physical and ecological changes that have already taken place and are still occurring, including those due to multiple environmental stressors.

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California Struggling to Prepare Quake Early Warning System

Sat, 2012-03-24 12:48 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Samuel Bendett

      

Workers fix subway lines that were damaged after an earthquake was felt in Mexico City on Tuesday, March 20. (Associated Press / March 19, 2012)

By Hector Becerra and Sam Allen, Times Staff Writers - latimes.com - March 22, 2012

The state spends a fraction of what countries like Mexico and Japan spend on their systems. One reason for the lack of interest, experts say, is that California has not experienced a catastrophic quake in more than a century.

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Resilience Alliance

Sat, 2012-01-28 10:29 — mdmcdonald

There are many definitions of resilience from simple deterministic views of resilience anchored in Newtonian mechanics to far more dynamic views of resilience from a systems perspective, including insights from quantum mechanics and the sciences of complexity.  One baseline perspective of resilience sees it in terms of the viability of socio-ecological systems as the foundation for sustainability.  For those that are ready to look beyond resilience as the ability to return to the "normal state" before a disaster, take a look at:

http://www.resalliance.org/

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Mesh Cities

Sat, 2012-01-28 09:54 — mdmcdonald

 

What does it take to become a smart city?  Why are mesh cities important to sustainability?

 

For more information:

<http://www.meshcities.com/>

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Protests in Occupy Oakland are Deepening and Broadening, But Perhaps in the Wrong Direction

Wed, 2011-11-09 04:35 — admin

One of the concerns from within the Occupy Movement, as well as from outside observers is that police violence is redirecting the energy of the protests into clashes between protesters and the police toward an escalating Victim - Villain - Hero cycle in which violence action is percevied as essential action between increasingly large crowds of citizens and law enforcement.  Increasing reports of police violence and charges are police brutality in many cities seem to be fueling larger and larger crowds inflamed by the injustice of the use of violence by the police against non-violent protesters and reporters acting within their legal rights. 

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Police Action Causes Critical Injury to Occupy Oakland Protester

Fri, 2011-10-28 10:44 — mdmcdonald

Occupy Oakland, Scott Olsen

Police battled protesters following an Occupy Oakland march to demonstrate against the closing of two occupations in the city in the early hours of Tuesday morning. More than 100 people have been arrested in Oakland since police cleared a camp in Frank Ogawa plaza.

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