Construction is poised to start in July on Uganda’s first-ever toll road. China is financing the $350-million project, which will be built under a public-private partnership for highway transportation management. Photo: Courtesy UNRA The current road to Entebbe Airport has heavy vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Map: Justin Reynolds The new toll road will connect the city of Kampala with the Entebbe International Airport. The 54-km highway, which will link the capital city of Kampala to the Entebbe International Airport, is set to start in July with financing from the Export-Import Bank of China. Construction is pending approval by the Ugandan
Lufkin Industries, a U.S.-based manufacturer of oil-field pumps and power transmission products, is building a new hub in Romania to serve the European, Middle Eastern and Central Asian markets. Architect-engineer-constructor Epstein, based in Chicago, is performing the design-build job of Lufkin’s manufacturing complex in Ploiesti, an industrial center. One factor in Epstein’s favor was that it had worked previously in Ploiesti for another American client. Lufkin’s project consists of a 300,000-sq-ft manufacturing building, a 38,000-sq-ft post-production plant and a single-story, 12,000-sq-ft office building. The $126-million project broke ground in October 2010. The precast concrete structure is fully erected for the
Chile has green-lighted a $4.4-billion coal-fired plant in the northern part of the country that will boast an installed capacity of 2,354 MW when completed in 2016, making it the largest powerplant in South America. The Hacienda Castilla project is being developed by MPX Energia SA, a Chilean unit of Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista’s mining, energy and engineering group EBX. In February, the company was granted a license for the project by the Chilean environmental agency, overturning an earlier environmental ruling that had threatened to derail the effort. Hacienda Castilla will involve building six 350-MW power-generating units as well as
Japanese officials managed to restore electricity to three damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi by March 28 but were battling to keep the unit’s radioactive water from leaking into the sea. Tokyo Electric Power Corp. (TEPCO) reported that water in concrete tunnels beneath Unit 2 was emitting radiation levels of 1,000 millisieverts per hour, or about 100,000 times the reactor’s normal level. The Japanese government also reported that it had detected the presence of plutonium in the soil around the reactors, a possible indication that a partial meltdown could have occurred at one of the three units. “The crisis at the
A Scotland-based utility has secured government approval to build a 10-MW demonstration marine power farm that will use a novel turbine to harness the kinetic energy of tidal streams. Installation of the 10 units off Scotland’s west coast is scheduled to start in 2013, following prototype testing at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney starting at the end of this year. Photo: Courtesy of ScottishPower Renewables A 300-MM prototype of the 1,000-MW Scottish machine was installed off Norway some eight years ago. Photo: Courtesy of ScottishPower Renewables Innovative HS300 turbine capitalizes on the kinetic energy of tidal streams. The
The federal team investigating last year’s Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 men in the Gulf of Mexico will conduct a week of hearings on April 4-8 in Metairie, La., to focus specifically on a forensic examination of the failed blowout preventer on the well. Conducted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement as well as the U.S. Coast Guard Joint Investigation Team, the hearings follow the March 20 release of a report by Norwegian risk-management specialist Det Norske Veritas on the blowout preventer. DNV tested, examined and investigated the failure of the 50-ft, 300-ton BOP in
Part of the reason that professor André Sorensen, an urban geographer at the University of Toronto, chose Japanese city planning in the early 1990s as his academic niche is that the topic had barely been explored at the time, at least in English. “Japan was the second-largest economy in the world, and there was almost nothing written about it,” says Sorensen, whose Ph.D. focused on Tokyo’s problematic sprawl and whose books have included 2004’s “The Making of Urban Japan.” Photo: Courtesy Of André Sorensen André Sorensen is the author of “The Making of Urban Japan.” From 1994 to 2002, Sorensen
Even without the spire that will make London’s Shard the tallest building in Western Europe, its recently topped-out core, reaching 72 floors above ground, already dominates the city. With the structural steelwork frame ending at level 40, concrete columns and post-tension floors will complete the rest of the 310-meter-tall building’s frame next to the River Thames. Now looming 244 m over the London Bridge railroad hub, the Shard’s stump has become a temporarily unattractive city landmark. But from ground level, the rising curtain wall gives a foretaste of the final building, designed by architect Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa, Italy.
Beyond the Nuclear Nightmare: Quake Takes a Daunting Toll With estimates of at least 110,000 buildings damaged or destroyed and 20,000 fatalities in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, rebuilding Japan will be a long and expensive undertaking, dwarfing the financial impact of the 1995 Kobe quake disaster. The World Bank estimates dam- age at up to $235 billion, 4% of Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP), compared with $100 billion for Kobe, or 2% of GDP. Private insurers could pay up to $33 billion to cover the destruction, compared with $783 million for Kobe, according to the bank. Restoration will
Florida politicians at the state and national level are trying to prohibit, defund or at least slow down implementation of a new water-quality standard for phosphorous and nitrogen. The new rule, recently issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, addresses the problem of algae blooms and establishes numeric criteria for nutrient pollution, mostly related to nitrogen and phosphorous, in the state’s lakes and flowing waters. Florida’s current standards are narrative-based, or verbal descriptions of clean- water conditions. EPA developed the rule as part of a 2008 lawsuit settlement with the Florida Wildlife Federation and finalized it in November 2010, according
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