Construction of the exploratory studies facility at Yucca Mountain - North Ramp

Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office of the US Department of Energy is constructing an Exploratory Studies Facility, approximately 160 km (100 miles) northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. This facility will be used to gather geological, hydrological, geomechanical, thermomechanical, and geochemical information to characterize Yucca Mountain as a potential site to isolate High-Level Radioactive Waste from the accessible environment. The Exploratory Studies Facility, when completed shall consist of two ramps from the surface, a connecting drift, underground test areas and below ground operational support facilities. The ramps and connecting drift are being mined by a 7.62 m (25 ft) diameter Tunnel Boring Machine. This machine was fabricated for the Department of Energy by Construction Tunneling Services, Inc; of Kent, Washington. This paper describes the current status of the concentration of the North Ramp at Yucca Mountain. At the time of this writing, the North Ramp had advanced to a distance of about 517 m (1700 ft). With the exception of some minor problems through Bow Ridge fault, the excavation has progressed as expected

The New York city off-hour delivery program: A business and community-friendly sustainability program

The New York City Off-Hour Delivery (NYC OHD) program is the work of a private-public-academic partnership - A collaborative effort of leading private-sector groups and companies, public-sector agencies led by the New York City Department of Transportation, and research partners led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The efforts of this partnership have induced more than 400 commercial establishments in NYC to accept OHD without supervision. The economic benefits are considerable: The carriers have reduced operational costs and parking fines by 45 percent; the receivers enjoy more reliable deliveries, enabling them to reduce inventory levels; the truck drivers have less stress, shorter work hours, and easier deliveries and parking; the delivery trucks produce 55-67 percent less emissions than they would during regular-hour deliveries, for a net reduction of 2.5 million tons of CO2 per year; and citizens\u27 quality of life increases as a result of reduced conflicts between delivery trucks, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, and through the use of low-noise delivery practices and technologies that minimize the impacts of noise. The total economic benefits exceed $20 million per year. The success of the OHD program is due largely to the policy design at its core, made possible with the behavioral microsimulation. This unique optimization-simulation system incorporates the research conducted into an operations research/management science tool that assesses the effectiveness of alternative policy designs. This enabled the successful implementation of the project within the most complex urban environment in the United States