Flad goes nuclear

Flad is designing buildings for Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Washington. Rendering courtesy of Flad & Associates

Updating a Cold War-era nuclear research facility for 21st century work has its challenges.

Consider storing large quantities of nuclear materials in one portion of the building while maintaining another as a completely radioactive-free research zone. It’s one of the challenges Flad & Associates, Madison, is eager to take on as it designs Pacific Northwest National Laboratories’ new building in Richland, Wash.

“This is a building that’s unlike anything anyone has done in recent years,” said Trip Grant, Flad’s project manager.

PNNL has operated on the Hanford site in Washington since the Manhattan Project of the 1940s. But the federally owned facilities are showing their age and in need of major repairs and environmental cleanup.

For a time, the government considered closing the facilities.

“They have one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the country,” Grant said. “Why disband it? So they said, ‘What can we do with that brain power?’”

The answer was constructing a state-of-the-art nuclear research center. About 455 people will work in subsurface science, chemistry, shielded operations, radiation detection, ultra-trace analysis and certification, and materials science and technology.

“They will be developing monitoring tools and tests to go to [other countries] to test to see if they are using nuclear power, if there is material that can be used in a dirty bomb,” Grant said.

PNNL is planning a four-building campus, and Flad is designing two, including the campus’ largest, a $224 million, 335,000-square-foot physical science building.

Merrick and Co., based in Aurora, Colo., is providing specialized consulting in nuclear physics. That company’s physicists are working closely with Flad architects to determine material and design specifications that ensure a safe and effective facility, Grant said.

“We have not dealt with something of this scale before,” he said. “That appealed to us, the ability to stretch our boundaries a little bit.”

Construction is expected to wrap in 2010.

- Jennifer Pfaff

Sawing logs

Photo courtesy of Lumberjack World Championships

More than 10,000 people will descend on Hayward the weekend of July 28 — swelling the hamlet’s population by more than three times — to pay tribute to Wisconsin’s rich logging history.

They will be greeted at the Lumberjack World Championships by more than 100 axe-handling, log-rolling and chainsaw-wielding experts from around the world.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to pay homage to the timber industry,” said Diane McNamer, the event’s executive director, explaining that Hayward is a former logging town, and its wood contributed to countless structures statewide.

Long-ago loggers would test their abilities against their peers’ to see who could chop wood or climb a tree fastest.

“It’s about strength, it’s about agility, and it’s about skill,” McNamer said. “These are all working skills that came out of the industry.”

The competition of today draws on those roots and sees phenomenal times. It’s quite a sight to watch someone chop through a 14-inch log in 14 seconds or race down a 90-foot pole in 13 seconds, McNamer said.

For tickets, visit www.lumberjackworldchampionships.com.

- Jennifer Pfaff