Shimizu Corp. One of the construction challenges is mooring the platforms during constant swells and turbulence. Related Links: Maine To Launch Offshore Floating-Turbine Prototype U.S. Offshore Wind Energy Purveyors Gaining Ground A Japanese demonstration project is the largest yet examining the feasibility of placing floating wind farms in deep water.A government-backed consortium is building three floating platforms, each of a different design, 12 miles off Japan's Pacific shore, using two types of wind turbines with a total generating capacity of 16 megawatts.The first, a 2-MW turbine and a floating substation, began operating in November. Two more 7-MW turbines will be

Related Links: Broad Array of Offshore Firms Provide Help at Fukushima (subscribers only) Japan Earmarks Funds for Cleanup TEPCO Crews Try To Cool Damaged Reactors at Fukushima Powerplant (subscribers only) Thirty months after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that touched off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan, the government has decided the crisis is too big a job for plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. to manage.On Sept. 3, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that, instead of "ad hoc approaches," the government would formulate a fundamental solution. The government also announced it would

The failure of bolts anchoring suspender rods likely sent tons of precast concrete ceiling panels crashing onto the roadway in a tunnel in central Japan on Dec. 2.

Related Links: TEPCO Crews Try To Cool Damaged Reactors at Fukushima Powerplant Life After Fukushima After Fukushima, the Non-Nuclear Options Special Report: Rebuilding Japan Eight months after the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant, the site has become a massive construction site. In fact, Japan is about to reach an important milestone: putting into cold shutdown Fukushima Daiichi's four damaged reactors.Last month, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the plant's owner, announced it would stabilize the crippled reactors and have the nuclear fuel cooled below 100 degrees Celsius by the end of December.The March 11 tsunami caused the loss

Five weeks into the Fukushima nuclear powerplant crisis, Tokyo Electric Power Co. on April 17 announced a road map leading to a cold shutdown that will minimize radioactive emissions and allow emergency evacuations around the plant to be lifted. The six- to nine-month plan calls for building new cooling systems as well as enclosures for four damaged reactors while limiting worker exposure to high radiation. “[The work is] very challenging because of the radiation levels,” says Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., who is following the crisis. The nine-month schedule, he believes, “is