Cutting a 55-in.-dia. opening into concrete is hardly rocket science. But when it’s the concrete shell of a huge underground tank that’s been storing highly-radioactive plutonium waste for more than 60 years, the cutaway could be a doorway to the unknown. Photo: Courtesy of WRPS Matt Landon, a contractor engineer at Hanford, measures the progress of a concrete cutting tool during a test on a simulated underground waste tank dome. Related Links: Video: Closing the Radioactive Spent Fuel K Basins at Hanford At month’s end, however, a U.S. Dept. of Energy contractor’s crew at the Hanford nuclear waste cleanup site
Contractors are grading roads and clearing timber at the site of the Boy Scouts of America’s fourth high-adventure camp in Fayette County, W.Va. Construction began in October, a year after a $50-millon grant from the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation kicked off plans for the largest construction project in the history of the Boy Scouts. Since that time, more than $100 million—including $25 million from the Suzanne and Walter Scott Foundation—has been donated to the construction of the 10,600-acre reserve near Mount Hope. The reserve is called The Summit: Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve, named for its largest contributor to date.
Following the initial surge in emergency response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP is in negotiations with several contractors to clean up paperwork and settle hundreds of million of dollars in payment disputes. Several contractors are claiming overdue invoices related to cleanup efforts following the April 20 explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig. The overdue payments, some more than 120 days old, are needed to pay employees, subcontractors and suppliers. Loupe Construction of Reserve, La., which was BP’s largest prime emergency-response contractor in St. Bernard Parish, La., claimed it was owed roughly $100 million. By early November, DRC
A new government report offers a harsh assessment of BP, its service contractors, and the U.S. Minerals Management Service in their respective roles in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Related Links: NAE Interim Report No Fault Assigned by Oil-spill Panel Uncalculated Risks ENR Coverage of Gulf Oil Spill The preliminary report from the National Academy of Engineering, released Nov. 17, suggests that BP and its service contractors “lacked a suitable approach for managing the inherent risks” at the Macondo well and learning from “near misses.” Click here to see full report. “Important decisions made to
After reviewing the performance of a BP-funded $360-million sand-berm project designed to keep oil from BP’s April 20, 2010, spill out of Louisiana marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has reallocated $100 million of the remaining $140 million to barrier-island restoration. With BP’s approval, the money now will be used to convert more than 10 miles of temporary berms into enduring restoration works for the islands. The other $40 million in BP funding will be used for renourishment, stabilization, environmental support and other compliance costs associated with the work, according to a Nov. 1 statement from the governor’s office. Nearly 17
The BP Oil Commission’s lead investigator, Fred Bartlit, refused to blame any firm involved in the Gulf of Mexico spill, saying that a combination of factors caused the deadly explosion at the Macondo oil well on April 20. Bartlit presented preliminary findings at the opening of the presidentially appointed commission’s Nov. 8-9 public meeting in Washington, D.C. He said BP and workers on the oil rig made conscious decisions to depart from the planned procedures in light of unexpected developments, and some of those decisions may have made sense. There is no evidence to suggest those decisions were financially based,
With dozens of cement trucks, two large batch plants and more than 1,000 workers scurrying about the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the former nuclear-weapons production site appears to be a massive construction project. In fact, the activity now supports a massive deconstruction project, boosted by a $1.4-billion federal stimulus infusion, to accelerate decommissioning and demolition of 75% of the legacy mission of the 310-sq-mile U.S. Energy Dept. site near Aiken before 2012. D&D work had been ready and on the shelf for years, officials say. “This was a natural fit for the [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act],” says
Halliburton Co. is denying that unstable drilling cement foam triggered the April 20 deadly explosion at the Macondo well, although the Houston-based oil-field services company admits it did not test the final cement mixture for stability before using it. On Oct. 28, Fred Bartlit Jr., the lead investigator for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, issued a report on Oct. 28 stating the cement foam was unstable and may have contributed to last spring’s blowout. Bartlit reported that tests performed by Chevron Corp. on a cement-slurry, or drilling mud, mixture— similar to that
Two Indonesian tsunami warning buoys, put in place after a 2004 earthquake and tidal wave killed more than 230,000 people, failed to activate on Oct. 25 when a 7.7 magnitude temblor hit the country’s Mentawai Islands. This time, more than 400 died. Even if the buoys had been operational, islanders would not have had enough time to evacuate, since the earthquake that triggered the tidal wave occurred too close to shore, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. After the 2004 event, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration donated two Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoys to
Cement slurry used in the Macondo well was unstable and may have contributed to the April 20 blowout aboard the Deepwater Horizon, according to a report issued Thursday by Fred Bartlit Jr., lead investigator for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Related Links: Gulf Oil Spill In his report to the presidential-appointed commission, Bartlit said that Houston-based Halliburton and BP both knew from previous tests that the nitrogen-based cement, as planned to be used in the Macondo well, would be unstable. “Halliburton (and perhaps BP) should have considered redesigning the foam slurry before
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