Demolition Progresses at Berkeley Laboratory

BERKELEY, Calif. – EM recently demolished three structures at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as it remediates an area of the Northern California campus that played an active role in groundbreaking science following World War II. The cleanup objective is to demolish seven buildings remaining in the “Old Town” section of the laboratory, remove floor slabs from four buildings demolished in 2011, remove contaminated soil under and adjacent to the buildings, and restore the area for future use. The buildings dating from the 1940s were declared seismically deficient. In their heyday they supported pioneering physics research using the lab’s cyclotron particle accelerator. Against the backdrop of San Francisco Bay, a worker seen here sprays water to suppress dust and debris during demolition of Building 5 at the site that was completed on Feb. 16. The building was constructed as a chemistry annex and radiation laboratory and was used for a variety of other purposes over the years.