Courtesy Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd and NDA Dounreay site, once the core of U.K. nuclear-power research, will be decommissioned. AU.K.-U.S. team has begun final negotiations with British officials to assume ownership and cleanup management of a defunct nuclear research site in Scotland, which would be Britain's second-largest decommissioning project. The team, selected on Nov. 23, is set to take over the Dounreay site in April if it can show how at least $780 million and six years can be cut from the current cleanup effort, which now may cost $4 billion and last until 2038.On Nov. 23, the U.K. Nuclear
Courtesy of Whole Water Systems LLC Utilities often do not allow constructed wetlands and other decentralized treatment systems. Courtesy of the Internatonal Living Future Institute Composting toilet systems are the most environmentally benign of the decentralized wastewater treatment systems studied in a recent report. For cities to be truly sustainable and resilient, wastewater treatment needs to be localized, not centralized, chorused landscape architects and others at the American Society of Landscape Architects' 2011 Annual Meeting & Expo, held on Oct. 29 to Nov. 2 in San Diego.“There is room for improvement in the modern approach to stormwater management,” said Jack
Rhode Island wind developer Deepwater Wind plans to develop two, $1-billion offshore underwater transmission networks for moving up to 2,000 MW of offshore wind energy to southern New England and New York.“A merchant transmission network would reduce the cost of servicing the wind farm by providing multiple points of interconnection,” says Bill Moore, CEO of Deepwater Wind, Providence, R.I. “By combining a utility-scale offshore wind farm with a regional transmission network, we can deliver firm power to address the area's electricity demand.”The submarine transmission lines are part of Deepwater's overall plan to develop four wind farms in the northeast, including
PHOTO COURTESY OF NeW YORK DEP The $800-million New York City portion of the new City Tunnel No. 3 supply line is designed to provide redundancy for an aging system. Regardless of size, location and system configuration, most of the water and wastewater utilities in the U.S. share a common attribute: the continuing need to upgrade and improve their treatment facilities and underground infrastructure.Though the sluggish post-recession economy has largely removed capacity expansion from the list of priorities, there remains no shortage of needs on utilities' to-do lists.Most often, the driver is meeting federal discharge mandates, as is the case
Related Links: Corps Unveils Public National Levee Database Corps Pulls Out All the Stops To Cope With Rising River Corps of Engineers' List of 93 Mississippi Basin Critical Flood Repair Projects As time races toward fall floods and potential disaster along the Mississippi River and Tributaries System, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is at work on 10 projects—damaged by high water this past spring and summer—that the agency deems most critical to protect life and safety. This work is worth an estimated $75.8 million, but the Corps wants to focus on the long term. Both the public and policymakers
How did a company like FedEx Corp. set its strategic direction for sustainability? That was the task given to D. Mitchell Jackson, FedEx staff vice president for environmental affairs and sustainability, when he took the post in 2007.Staff members suggested reducing fuel usage. Jackson responded, “That's a tactic, not a strategy.” He found the answer in what FedEx does every day. “We deliver eight million packages, but more than that, we connect the world, allowing customers to do business in 220 countries and territories.” Its sustainability strategy, therefore, was to “connect the world responsibly and resourcefully.”Jackson, a mechanical engineer by
If you want an early briefing of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ new, National Levee Database, register soon because there are only 120 spaces available for each of three webinars that have been scheduled to introduce it, starting Oct. 27.The Corps is announcing public access to the NLD, a dynamic information source that provides, for the first time, map-based visualization and search capabilities for the location and condition of levee systems nationwide. Developed by engineers and scientists, it is said to have a "distinctly technical feel." There will be at least two levels of access, one, will make available
Related Links: Audit: Deficiencies in N.Y. Wastewater Treatment Plant Before Collapse Binghamton-Johnson City, N.Y., Sewer Board Files Collapse Suit Safety Report on Upstate New York Treatment Plant Due in June The owners of the Binghamton-Johnson City Joint Sewage Treatment Plant, site of a 100-ft wall collapse in May, are eager to begin repairs but they first must determine if Hurricane Irene-related flooding undermined the structure's foundation.The two south-central New York state cities, which own and operate the plant, are also dealing with a pair of engineering reports that blame construction errors and changes for the wall failure and that limit
In the wake of the stunning devastation left by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tohoku Tsunami, there were teetering remains of scattered mangled structures interspersed with standing, unscathed structures.Japanese and American forensic engineers still are combing the debris and data from the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami to study the forces and suss out how the wounded and surviving structures differ from those that are gone. Now one group, a tsunami loads-and-effects subcommittee sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers, is preparing to publish early next year approximately 350 pages filled with engineering analysis and case studies