D. Kent Smith is well aware there are no shortcuts when it comes to cleaning up 60 years of radioactive and other wastes at the U.S. Energy Dept.'s Hanford former nuclear-weapons site in Washington state.

After a bump, the demolition of Seattle's Husky Stadium is moving ahead.Despite stressing a crane to the point of damage when dismantling the overhanging roof on the south side of Seattle’s Husky Stadium, Turner Construction Co., the project's general contractor, was able to continue roof demolition from the grandstand seating area, says Richard Teddy, Turner’s senior project manager.Demolition crews utilized cables and a cutting shear on a high-reach extendable track-hoe to remove the roof and upper seating areas, which are being demolished and hauled out for recycling. No additional crane was needed. Demolition crews will now work into February removing

YouTube Video shows crane near miss at Husky Stadium at the University of Washington in Seattle. Related Links: Watch the Video A video of Seattle's Husky Stadium roof demolition went viral on the web as fans clamored to get a look at the start of major renovations at the famed 90-year-old structure. But a near miss captured in that same video also got the attention of the Washington State Dept. of Labor and Industries, launching an investigation into the operation of a crane there.The video clearly shows a massive jarring, or shock-loading, to a crane while the east portion of

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Workers remove the east end of a highly contaminated tank in the 209-E Critical Mass Laboratory to provide access to two storage tanks as part of the facility's demolition. CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Crews spent two months developing mockups, even fabricating non-contaminated replica tanks, to insure safe demolition of 11 large tanks formerly used in weapons production experiments. With radioactive contamination saturating the 209-East Critical Mass Laboratory at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Hanford Nuclear Waste Site in southeast Washington, contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. needed new techniques to demolish the nearly 9,000-sq-ft

Photo: ODOT Unstable earth and lateral loads have stymied completion of a U.S. 20 project. After millions of dollars in costs and years of delays, the Oregon Dept. of Transportation has labeled as a failure the landslide mitigation on an unfinished four-mile stretch of U.S. 20 between Pioneer Mountain and Eddyville.In an attempt to bypass a windy 10-mile roadway prone to landslide damage, Yaquina River Constructors—whose parent company is Watsonville, Calif.-based Granite Construction Co.—planned to build a total of 11 bridges for its design-build contract. Seven are now complete. The remaining four bridges were to range from 600 ft to

A decade after work began on the $12.2-billion waste treatment plant at the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Hanford site in southeastern Washington—set to be the world's largest to treat "mixed" nuclear and chemical wastes—the 65-acre "vit plant" complex still faces uncertainty in cost and design, despite completion of 85% of its engineering and more than 60% of its construction.The difficulty of designing the facilities needed to turn Hanford's 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive and chemical wastes into vitrified glass has DOE and its main contractor, Frederick, Md.-based Bechtel National, cautious as they stare down a 2013 design completion deadline

Photo courtesy of Poet Poet Design and Construction crews construct a new weigh station at Poet's Liberty Project in Iowa. As the U.S. Depts. of Energy and Agriculture pony up grants and loans to help fund new research and refineries to turn woody waste into cellulosic ethanol, private-sector companies are building the first commercial-scale cellulosic refineries in the nation and promoting their chemical processes for easy conversion from waste to sugar to fuel.With more than a half-dozen cellulosic plants in development in the U.S., federal officials and private companies hope to prove wrong a recent report from the National Research

Photo courtesy of DOE Highly radioactive buildings are among many in Hanford's former atomic-bomb fuel-production area that are scheduled to be demolished. Photo courtesy of DOE Workers seal a waste disposal container, while excavators take apart the so-called 327 production building last year. In the last substantial cleanup of highly radioactive waste in an area of the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Hanford nuclear-waste site that was once the core of nuclear-reactor fuel production for atomic bombs, crews will use a gantry crane and grout to move and seal a vault and tank weighing 1,700 tons. The pick, part of the

Courtesy of Mahlum. DIET Hospital is designed to use nearly two-thirds less energy than most Pacific Northwest facilities. Courtesy of the Miller Hull Partnership. ENERGY MISER At 52,000 sq ft, office building is designed to use 16,000 Btu per sq ft per year. Two small projects in Washington state are emphasizing sustainable design beyond the norm. The 38,000-sq-ft Peace Island Medical Center is designed to use almost one-third the energy of a typical hospital in the Northwest. In Seattle, the 52,000-sq-ft Bullitt Center is a net-zero energy-use project that is designed to produce as much energy as it uses over

The construction of a casting facility in Aberdeens harbor is a vital component of Seattles planned bridge replacement. Photos courtesy of Washington DOT Crews are nearing completion of the casting basin. A joint-venture team began reconstruction work this month of the longest floating bridge in the world, while two of its members also near completion on a key related facility to build massive pontoons.Omaha-based Kiewit Corp., General Construction Co. of Federal Way, Wash., and Manson Construction, Seattle, began work on Sept. 2 on its $586.5-million contract to rebuild Washington's state Route 520 floating bridge over Lake Washington—the longest in the