Niagara Tunnel breaks through

June 24, 2011 rockman Project Related 2
47-ft diameter TBM breaks through on Niagara Tunnel

47-ft diameter TBM breaks through on Niagara Tunnel

This spring the world’s largest hard rock TBM at over 47 ft in diameter broke through on the 6.4 mile Niagara Tunnel Project. Ontario Power and Water commissioned the project as a third tunnel to convey water from the Niagra River for hydropower generation. The tunnel was plagued with major hurdles, including the difficult Queensland Shale unit which caused massive overbreak issues. The tunnel project was a favorite topic of a very entertaining blogger Harold Asmis at Ontario Geo-fish. He had a very wry and pessimistic view of the project and loved to chronicle the many challenges and tribulations faced during the tunnel construction. I tried to keep a running list of his blog posts on the topic of the Niagara tunnel. But regardless of the technical and financial challenges, the completion of the tunnel represents a significant engineering accomplishment! [Source: Tunnel Business Online. Image: Tunnel Business Online]

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Niagara Tunnel – Crappy rock, Horizontal stress, SLOOOOOW progress

April 28, 2009 rockman Project Related Comments Off on Niagara Tunnel – Crappy rock, Horizontal stress, SLOOOOOW progress

image[Updated November 17, 2009] A few new posts from Ontario-geofish [/Updated]

Those with interest in rock mechanics and tunneling might be interested in this project. The Ontario Power Generation (OPG) company is the owner of a $600M (Canadian) construction project to create a third hydro power tunnel under Niagara Falls.  Apparently the project is having all kinds of problems with overbreak in some very difficult tunneling conditions which means very slow progress and big $$ overruns. (Photo from niagarafrontier.com)

I’ve been meaning to post something on this project for some time. I admit that my perspective is biased by the viewpoint you can find on the Ontario-geofish blog. I’ve mentioned Harold Asmis before, he’s the owner of the OG blog, and a former OPG employee if I understand correctly. He left OPG for a career doing geophysics and earthquake engineering for the Nuclear Power industry in Canada.  I highly recommend his blog, he has great insight into tunneling, earthquakes, siting of nuclear power plants not to mention opinions on all kinds of other things.  His writing style is very colorful and entertaining as well.

So, Harold has written a whole series of blog posts on the Niagra Tunnel project, including a 5-part series entitled "The Disaster of the Niagara Tunnel" and a 4-part series called "Niagara Tunnel: doing it Right".  He is not directly involved with the project, but his long career with OPG and related disciplines gives him some great insights.  I’ve collected a list of some of his blog posts on the Niagara Tunnel project as well as a few other links about the project. Click through for the good stuff.

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2 Comments

  1. Yes, technology helps to overcome the adverse ground conditions; TBM is a better and faster solution than the conventional D & B; would be glad to know reasons of time and cost over runs, if any, while driving the TBM through. thnks.

  2. There is a bunch of information on the Ontario Geofish blog and you can start with my [url=https://www.geoprac.net/geonews-mainmenu-63/64-project-related/484-niagara-tunnel-crappy-rock-horizontal-stress-slooooow-progress]attempt at indexing it[/url]. He’s a rock mechanics guy with experience working for Ontario Power. He’s very entertaining to read as well. I don’t know of any official sources of information on the overbreak and cost overruns. But the Queensland Shale is a highly disturbed rock mass and the tunnel alignment goes through an area where the principal stress direction is horizontal, not a very good combination for tunneling.

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