During the 1950s and 60s, engineers and scientists sought ways to use nuclear weapons for major construction projects such as harbors, roads and even alternative routes for the Panama Canal.
Kings Bay naval base, on the Georgia-Florida border, has been the U.S. Navy hub for nuclear ballistic missile submarines since the 1980s, says the team submission, with operations halted for the first time to enable an estimated $627M upgrade of its unique drydock and other infrastructure that was completed last year.
After a bid protest, the megacontract to operate the giant Y-12 and Pantex waste sites will be rescoped and split, but Energy Dept. provides no rebid schedule. Bechtel will remain manager of both sites for at least two years.
NuScale Power has announced its first submittal to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for pre-licensing vendor design review of NuScale's small modular reactor (SMR) design.
On Nov. 9 Belgium-based crane manufacturer Sarens launched the SGC-250 crane, which boasts a 5,000-metric-ton lifting capacity and a load moment of 250,000 ton-meters.
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake occurred on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido on Sept. 6, leaving at least seven dead and damaging buildings and structures in the region, including a 1,650MW coal-fired thermal power plant that was taken offline.
Strengthening the transmission and distribution grid, increasing distributed generation and even trimming vegetation would likely do more to improve grid resilience than a proposed draft order from the Trump administration that would force system operators to keep coal and nuclear plants operating for at least two years.
While proponents of a grid resiliency measure said it would bolster the system during bad weather, the recent winter storm proved such efforts unnecessary.
