The ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant quickly triggered demands from politicians and activists from California to New York to Germany and elsewhere to shut down aging nuclear reactors, but replacing existing nuclear generation isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Photo: Keith Philpott, Courtesy of Black & Veatch Power play Coal-fired base-load powerplants, such as the 655-MW plant. Photo: Courtesy of Alstom U.S. Osceola, Ark., will remain, but the dawn of renewables is fast approaching. At best, taking nuclear powerplants off line might encourage more development of renewable generation and push distributed generation, but only years or
One night in early March as well as the next day before dawn, the Dept. of Energy’s Jeffrey M. Baker wasn’t pleased when he noticed lights still burning on two floors of his pet project: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s new, ultra-green office building in Golden, Colo. “The cleaning staff probably left them on,” said Baker, who oversees the lab. Photo: Dennis Schroeder/NREL Monitors Pless (left) and a colleague track the building’s energy use to see if it aligns with the energy model used for design. Related Links: 2011 Award of Excellence Winner: Jeffrey M. Baker Risky ‘Golden’ Job Proves
Constructing any major hospital is a challenge, but building a 320-bed state-of-the-art teaching hospital for $16 million in the highlands of Haiti is fraught with difficulties. Yet the aid group Partners in Health (PIH) is doing just that, using funds that come not from the government or the United Nations but from donations collected by the Boston-based group, which has worked for 23 years to boost the capacity of Haiti’s public health sector. The materials, services and cash contributions are coming from private companies and organizations, especially from companies in the U.S. construction sector. The hospital, which will have six
Haselden Construction and architect RNL put almost everything on the line for the Energy Dept.’s Research Support Facility in Golden, Colo. The firm-fixed-price contract, at $64 million, was risky, says Byron Haselden, even after terms were sweetened to include a $2-million incentive award fee and the contract adjusted so the team did not have to commit to a price in its proposal. Photo: Courtesy of Stantec Macey, Haselden and Andary (from left) are using the federal project to get more ultra-green work. Related Links: 2011 Award of Excellence Winner: Jeffrey M. Baker Closely Watched Building Lives Up to Expectations DOE’s
Two months after a 110-lb light fixture fell onto a roadway along Boston’s Big Dig highway project, Massachusetts Dept. of Transportation inspectors have found some corrosion in the 23,000 lighting fixtures that line the Central Artery tunnel. In the wake of the resignation of a highway administrator following a delay in notifying the public about the fixture, the agency’s operational procedures are under scrutiny “I have acknowledged our failure to alert the public in a timely manner and the lapse in our internal communications, which we are currently working to address,” state transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan says. “We are continuing
The proposed $6-billion, DesertXpress high-speed passenger train project recently cleared its first major hurdle with the March 24 release of its final environmental impact statement. Circle Point, San Francisco, prepared the report on behalf of the Federal Railroad Administration. A record of decision is expected this spring. Photo: US DOT Fares would be $50 to ride the steel-wheel trains DesertXpress will follow the Interstate 15 alignment between Victorville, Calif. and Las Vegas, using existing right-of-way either along the median or roadside, and will build two passenger stations, a maintenance-storage-operation facility and three electrical substations. The project’s overhead catenary electric powered
Six weeks ahead of schedule, contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers placed a 140-ton, steel vertical lift gate near the south end of an 1.8-mile-long storm surge barrier nearing completion in New Orleans. The placement marks the first closure of three openings on the surge barrier. It represents a significant milestone toward closing the barrier and having hurricane protections in place by the 2011 hurricane season. Manson Gulf LLC, Houma, La., used a 500-ton ringer crane for the March 24 installation of the gate where the Lake Borgne Inner Harbor Navigation Canal surge barrier crosses the Bayou Bienvenue
The Quindao Haiwan Bridge, an unusual branching structure crossing Jiaozhou Bay, was completed in January. It spans the mouth of the bay but branches off approximately 20 kilometers to the north to connect with Qingdao Liuting International Airport. When the three legs of the bridge converge, the exit ramps lead to overpasses typical of highway interchanges, except this interchange is located in the middle of Jiaozhou Bay. The contractor, Shandong High Speed Group Co. Ltd., claims Quindao Haiwan is the first bridge with an interchange over water. Although its total length of 41.6 km exceeds Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain Bridge by
Breaking ground on Feb. 28 in a ceremony attended by Turkey Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a 5.4-kilometer twin-deck tunnel crossing beneath the Bosphorus’ seabed will join the European and Asian sides of Istanbul at a cost of $1.4 billion. Istanbul is the largest metropolitan city in Europe and third-largest city in the world, with a population of 13.2 million. The Istanbul Strait Road Tube Crossing, or the Eurasia Tunnel, will be designed, built, financed and operated by Avrasya Tüneli Isletme Insaat ve Yatirim Anonim Sirketi (ATAS), a partnership of Yap? Merkezi from Turkey and SK E&C, Kukdong, Samwhan Corp. and
India is developing an ambitious plan to boost the country’s fledgling airport infrastructure. Economic planners estimate the voracious appetite for commercial air travel will require an investment of about $30 billion by 2020. Now at 100 million passengers per year, traffic is expected to reach 180 million by 2015 and 300 million by 2020, according to Ministry of Civil Aviation estimates. More than 20 proposals are currently under consideration for greenfield airports, and some $3 billion is expected to be spent on the sector in the next three years. The to-do list includes the newly approved Mumbai Airport, expected to
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