Let us now praise the tunnel diggers, for they perform feats marvelous and astounding. Consider the engineers at Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, who spent most of 2005 trying to punch a 20-foot-wide passageway through 7 miles of mountain in the Central Andes. (The tunnel will connect two hydroelectric plants.) Last November, their boring machine – a sort of 443-foot-long robotic earthworm on tracks – was 3 miles in when it got stuck. The head had run into a fault filled with water, which poured into the cavern and derailed the entire assembly. Then the tunnel caved in.
It took more than five months to excavate the machine – and four days later it hit another fault. In May, the team finally regained their top chewing-through-rock speed of 75 feet a day. Then, in August, a volcano erupted 5 miles from the work site, resulting in two days' worth of power outages.
Despite all that, the tunnel should be done in November – nine months ahead of schedule. Odebrecht's next boring project? Burrowing through 12 miles of stone in Peru.
– C. J. Schexnayder
credit C. J. Schexnayder
Tunnel-boring machine
credit C. J. Schexnayder
Hydroelectric link
credit C. J. Schexnayder
Concrete prep work
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