This is a great little time lapse video from WSDOT that shows the construction of the tunnel behind the Bertha’s disassembly pit for the Alaska Way Viaduct Replacement Project.
Building the Tunnel Behind Bertha
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New Tunnel Project In Peru Through Andes
From ENR:
In the mountains of Peru a tunnel-boring machine named “Pacha Mama†is grinding through the heart of the Andes under rock as deep as 6,890 ft. It is carving away at a 20.2-kilometer-long tunnel through the South American Continental Divide to deliver water to arid coastal farmland.
This is a really interesting project, known as the Los Olmos project, and a nice little article. Normally for a civil tunnel project you drill geotechnical holes beforehand to know what kind of material you’re dealing with. In this case, because of the depth, they don’t have that luxury, so all decisions will be made on the fly. The depth of the tunnel creates some very challenging rock mechanics and logistics problems as well! (Illustration by Odebrecht)
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Building the world’s longest tunnel tests advanced surveying technologies
The Gotthard Base Tunnel will eventually be a 35-mile rail tunnel through the famed Alps in southern Switzerland. So what does it take to survey the world’s longest tunnel? How about setting some 7,000 points […]
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Finnish Deep Nuclear Waste Disposal Reaches Milestone
Finland is leading the world when it comes to permanently disposing of spent nuclear fuel in a deep geologic repository. Their Onkalo facility recently completed excavation of the first of five final disposal tunnels, a […]