Préparation plus intense, tests de matériel dans des tunnels enneigés: Vincent Defrasne n'a pas lésiné sur les moyens pour être affûté tôt dans la saison. "J'ai plutôt travaillé mes points forts", explique-t-il. Reste à voir si cela paiera dès mercredi, sur le 20 kilomètres individuel d'Oestersund, première étape de la Coupe du monde.

p Plink. Plink. Tink. One billion dollars of up-front investment and it all comes down to this: a slow but steady trickle of milky white pebbles dropping from a funnel into an acrylic jar. The jar is locked inside a glass case that's inside a vault that's inside the high-security Red Area of a prefab aluminum building on the Canadian tundra. Every 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year, miners for the South African company De Beers blast 3,150 tons of rock mdash; enough to fill 80 trucks mdash; from under the earth near this aluminum building and feed it into crushers, scrubbers, sifters, and x-ray machines. It's a lot of effort for a little, but the little is a lot: the equivalent of two coffee mugs a day full of rough diamonds. /p p Running a diamond mine in the Arctic is a mind-boggling undertaking. "This is a camp in the middle of nowhere," says Peter Mooney, manager of the processing plant at Snap Lake, "and a bloody horrible winter's day in Africa is the nicest summer day here. The real problem with diamonds isn't even their scarcity," he says. "It's that getting them takes a lot of science and engineering and lots and lots of money." /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption" An aerial view shows the Snap Lake facility. br /emPhoto: Courtesy DeBeers/em /div/div/div !-- close pic -- p Fipke doesn't work for De Beers mdash; they're competitors mdash; but the Snap Lake project, just like the ones at Ekati and Diavik, is part of the new era that Fipke created. The only way in is by air on company charter flights, except for six to 10 weeks in winter when ice road truckers mdash; just like on the History Channel show mdash; cart in fuel, mining machines and haul trucks, dormitories and parts for generators, conveyor belts, explosives. /p p On a 4,000-foot gravel runway, commuter planes and 737s trade approaches and takeoffs with C-130 Hercules flights full of cargo. After my ATR threads its way to the ground, a yellow school bus picks me up and drops me at a snaking series of linked prefab trailers containing sleeping quarters, offices, and a cafeteria. I fill out forms. I agree to be searched at any time. I agree not pick up any rocks from the ground, even the smallest pebble. Hundreds of closed-circuit cameras watch my every move. /p p Snap Lake is unusual mdash; instead of blowing straight up to the surface, the magma followed a crooked path through fissures in the surrounding granite. Snap Lake's kimberlite is a 9-foot-thick, 2.5-by-1.6-mile seam angling slightly downward. It's also about 200 feet under a lake that's frozen most of the year. So all of Snap Lake's mining is underground mdash; a cold, wet, black world of rising and falling tunnels constantly leaking water from the lake above. /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption"Snap Lake miners work under the lake. br /emPhoto: Andrew Hetherington/em/div/div/div !-- close pic -- p The operation consumes 25,000 gallons of fuel a day mdash; and the work never stops. Miners drill holes in rock faces, insert explosives, and blow out over 1,500 tons of gray kimberlite per blast, twice a day. Trucks carry the ore to a large bin where it's stored. Then it's sent to a crusher that feeds the rock onto a mile-long conveyor belt that carries it to the surface, to the Blue Area, specifically a 5-story building of more crushers and sifters and shakers and screens and heavy liquid cyclone separators that pick out all the heavy ore. It's a roaring maze of steel grates and 60-foot staircases. /p p Eventually the conveyors pass into a more secure building-within-the-building, the Red Area. It's accessible only via a room the size of a closet; when the door behind me locks, cameras confirm that I'm alone. A green light tells me to proceed through zigzagging rooms that would be difficult to, say, kick a diamond through. /p p The ore passes down through another tower of sorters mdash; x-rays illuminate diamonds. A secondary (and secret) process uses lasers to further refine the stream. At the end of the line, past an 8-inch-thick steel door and a set of steel bars, is the vault itself, a small room with half a dozen cameras and a big, rectangular glass box shot with glove-lined holes, like an incubator for premature infants. Stones mdash; some the size of pin heads, others the size of gum balls mdash; drop into a jar. Sometimes five minutes pass with nary a gem, and then two or three tumble out at once. Over the course of a year, there will be 1.2 million carats. Some are opaque; some are as clear as glass. Of the 430 men and women working here, no more than 60 will ever see this vault mdash; or any diamonds. Ever. I slip my hands through the holes and into gloves, and pick up the biggest rock I see, a perfect 5-carat octahedral crystal three times older than the human species, formed during the age of the mastodons. A chunk of pure carbon, beautiful and banal. I ask how much it's worth. "Not allowed to say," Mooney says. "Put it this way: That's a hell of a lot of diamonds." /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption" Dumptrucks loaded with ore exit Snap Lake mine. br /emPhoto: Andrew Hetherington/em /div/div/div !-- close pic -- p Diamond jewelry has never moved me. But suddenly, holding this stone, I can't help it. I want one. The gears in my mind whir. And it's as if Mooney can hear them. "People get very clever," he says, "and very determined. We haven't had any theft here yet, but we check the gloves for holes every day." I gently place the stone back in the pile. /p p Exiting requires an additional turn into a room with an x-ray machine and a glass wall. Under the gaze of a man who says, "Don't worry, I've seen it all," I strip to my underpants, place my clothes and shoes and socks through the x-ray machine. Open my mouth. Show behind my ears. Sit in a chair and show the bottoms of my feet. Stand and run my fingers under the band of my underpants. There's only one hiding place left, which happily they don't check. I'm cleared and allowed to dress. /pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:d011f686205262c6951fc33685b9bb46:a8pvoY0DF4w6AiLCDaPAxt4vcEJtvr5wJESgvBmhZizGdIwUswHdfQNGT0WMrv4ojgA5yCeDKy7W3Q%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1735cba2b691243040d240890798faea:5NRFEhJtG%2F%2F8WaCMCuPS%2F4RjNqb89d3oWFzueVglFjn1wsAbytlpHHl8XzVTjtNg41BQd3NxQV9w'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:dc8729a9cfdd0557ca41dce4be2e075c:2CxMVa%2F06wsEm0VSsYE%2FCE1SkSz%2BXA1VhsMeuyIIPLpXdjBq3K9BXbQVcJ4ZOEwec2vUcRvFaVES'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:70ffb3fccb1fa0cdf92173d47ab87d7e:2M67At%2B4WlXawKkc8v5qSMyJqs1W%2BmVDtVF1w7XerfxYF1r%2Fc7E49pH6Pz6uWaHwwDnYF5Rlqbzi'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=1DnDqv"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=1DnDqv" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472101284" height="1" width="1"/

The largest contractor on the Big Dig and a bolt distribution company have agreed to pay $26 million for damages stemming from the fatal collapse of the Interstate 90 tunnel, as the total settlements negotiated by state and federal prosecutors surged past half a half-billion dollars. Modern Continental Corp., the Cambridge company that earned $3.2 billion on the mammoth project, agreed to a settlement of $21 million for damages resulting from the collapse of ceiling panels in the I-9

Auteur : LBNstudio
Tags : legalbroadcastnetworkBig Digsettlement$26 million Brad HenrycollapsepodcastvideoLBNdrakedamageDe Valle
Envoyé : 01 décembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

Author: ennedemme Keywords: 30112008031 Added: December 1, 2008

Entre le lundi 24 et le mercredi 26 novembre, au volant d'un véhicule inconnu, un conducteur inconnu circulait sur l'AR A5, tunnel de Gorgier, ...

The holiday season brings back memories of toy trains running under the Christmas tree. My father built a six-foot-long platform for an American Flyer train set that was mine and went under the tree. My younger brother had a square platform for an HO-scale Lionel train and it sat off to the side. Each holiday season, we'd get these train-boards down and set up the track, fitting the sections together to create the oval. We'd unwrap the plastic pieces that made up the model village, and place the styrofoam train tunnel carefully around a bend. Finally, we'd wire the transformer to the track and get the train running along. Of course, we'd crank up the power and see how fast the train would go without it jumping off the tracks. It's a time when you're glad to have younger siblings distributed around the track ready to put the cars back on track. Trains were something to enjoy through the holidays and we'd complain not only that the holiday ended but that it was time to put these trains away. when I was young growing up in LA, my favorite place to eat was a diner that had sawdust on the floor. What I remember most is that the diner had a train that ran along the u-shaped counter and made a loop back into the kitchen. Sitting at the counter, I wrote down my order and clipped the piece of paper to a boxcar and off it went to the kitchen. Soon, the train returned and stopped in front of me with my plate sitting on top of a flatbed car. When my own son was young, we set up some trains at Christmas and enjoyed them. I don't know if they occupy the same place in his brain as they do in mine. Video games have meant more to him and honestly, race-car sets were much more fun. Nonetheless, coming upon Christmas again, I want to build a train board and get a train set. I've been looking at what's new in trains, and I see digital command systems. It's a little hard to figure it out. I'm curious how trains and computers (microcontrollers, even) might play together today. Recently, I was re-reading Steven Levy's book, Hackers, and it begins by telling the story of the MIT Model Railroad Club. There were two groups in the student club -- one that worked on the detailed layouts and the other that worked on the switching. It was the latter that saw the possibilities for using computers to control the trains. It was this group that first defined the hacker ethic and what Levy called the "hands-on" imperative. If you couldn't get your hands on something and take it apart, you could not understand how it works and learn to use it. In those days, computer manufacturers wouldn't have thought that a model train set was an appropriate application for computers, nor could they have imagined that the future of technology would be influenced so much by hackers. Over the weekend, I visited the Golden State Model Railway Museum in Point Richmond, California. The trains weren't running on the day I visited but I did get to see the different layouts, simulating different California scenes. The museum is a little sleepy, with old men working on the tracks. Frankly, what I imagine going on there is more interesting than what is actually going on. I want more interactivity than what's possible with the large-scale train layouts. I also recall over the years visiting men who had elaborate train yards in their garages. The layouts are meticulous and each one must have taken years to build. I don't necessarily want to the be that kind of person. Afterwards my wife and I went on a beautiful walk in the Miller-Knox Regional Park across the street from the museum. It's the site of the Ferry Point Terminal, where, in the days before there were bridges over the Bay, trains arrived at this pier. Passengers and cargo were unloaded on to ferries and transported across the bay. Today, Ferry Point is a makeshift fishing pier but the shadowy hulk of train tracks and a rusty crane remain in place....br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=acccf5379b42a77767f5013c78e746adp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=acccf5379b42a77767f5013c78e746adp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=acccf5379b42a77767f5013c78e746ad" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

If you were inspired by that data center in a nuke bunker idea, here’s your chance! A tunnel complex under London was put up for sale for a cool $7.4 Million. What are you waiting for, mate?

Appearing more like the set of a James Bond movie than prime real estate, the complex still has a bar and two canteens, not in use, and a billiard room, not to mention functioning water and electricity supplies.



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A stuffy, noisy mile-long secret Cold War tunnel is up for sale in London, asking price $7.4 million, connecting up Chancery Lane with the Thames. It’s only got two lifts, which means you couldn’t possibly get fire-code approval to run it as a hotel or club, but there’s all kinds of intriguing possibilities (e.g. ball pit) for this much subterranean volume.

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pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/28tunnels.600.jpg" width="650" height="346" style="display:block;float:none;" /Last Sunday we were writing about a href="http://gizmodo.com/5097008/new-york-city-water-nightmare-is-an-underwater-gadget-lovers-dream"amazing underground diving rigs/a in the heart of New York City. It seems only fair that we jump across the pond this Sunday and write about a mile-long super secret deltunnel/del lair below London that's currently for sale, don't you think? Asking price: A cool $7.4 million. It sounds a bit much for an empty stretch of nothingness deep below the British streets, but wait until you hear about the history. Oh, the emhistory/em!/p pThis tunnel is actually one of eight built by the British government during World War 2 as a network of bomb shelters to protect citizens from the German blitz. They could hold 8,000 people and were designed to function for five weeks without any assistance from the outside world. This "protection" even included "a bar and two canteens, not in use, and a billiard room, not to mention functioning water and electricity supplies," reports the New York Times./p pHowever, after their completion, the tunnels were held aside to serve as secret bases of operations for soldiers. They were never used as shelters. Instead, they served as a temporary base for D-Day troops; one even became the European HQ for U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later, in 1944, the tunnels became bastions of counterintelligence, as members of the secret service used them to coordinate resistance movements in Nazi-controlled countries. The tunnels, once filled with Normandy invaders, were decked out with spy gear, telephones and teleprinters./p pToday, though, the tunnels are empty, and waiting for some rich playboy real estate tycoon to swoop in and buy them up. Won't you take up that standard, and invite us poor gadget-loving folk to a few parties below the busy London streets? Please? [a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/business/worldbusiness/28tunnel.html?_r=2"New york Times/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2958cd1cf763fa0a60974ef9b76d6074p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2958cd1cf763fa0a60974ef9b76d6074p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2958cd1cf763fa0a60974ef9b76d6074" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=RMztBqpE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ynov6Wer"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=COUYox9z"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=COUYox9z" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=WEnfbtAO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=WEnfbtAO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/BTuMtilHsAU" height="1" width="1"/

Last Sunday we were writing about amazing underground diving rigs in the heart of New York City. It seems only fair that we jump across the pond this Sunday and write about a mile-long super secret...