Yield Strength

The trans-Alaska pipeline system is 800 miles long -- and has moved over 14 billion barrels of oil.


I can't find a credit, but here's the link.

Four entries from the glossary of the Alyeska pipeline website:

Breakout Tank - a tank used to relieve surges in a hazardous liquid pipeline system, or to receive and store hazardous liquid transported by a pipeline for re-injection and continued transportation by pipeline.
Permafrost - Any rock or soil material that has remained below 32½F continuously for two or more years.
Thermal Expansion - change in pipe length due to a change in crude oil temperature.
Yield Strength - the stress level above which the pipe will yield/bend/stretch.

Yesterday in New Mexico a Canadian man, Alfred Heinz Reumayr , was convicted of trying to blow the thing up with a series of explosions planned for January 1, 2000.

The plan was designed to wreak environmental and financial havoc on the United States.

The last line in the International Herald Tribune article reads:

"Al repeatedly said, 'I don't want anybody hurt,'" the lawyer added.

How is it that we are so capable of disassociation? That the ideas of injury are distanced enough from our sense of impact that we can excuse ourselves from their wake? Are we at our yield strength? What is the next category of give?

At any rate, he never could have done it. For the entire project the man with the know-how was an ATF informant.