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Tunnel Boring Machine Completes Hole Under Niagara Falls
abhatt writes with news that "Big Becky," a 4,000-ton tunnel boring machine, has finished chewing through over 10 kilometers of rock underneath Niagara Falls, Ontario, a project that's been underway since 2006.
"The 10.2 kilometer tunnel is 14.4 meters in diameter. Big Becky ate through 1.6 million cubic meters of rock to reach her goal. That’s enough rock, officials said, to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto. And the cement used to line the tunnel would build a sidewalk stretching from Windsor to Quebec City. ... The project took longer and cost more because Becky ran into unexpected conditions. She’s designed to go through solid rock, but encountered a stretch of loose, crumbling material that was unsuitable for tunneling. That forced a long and expensive detour."
Why they drilled that tunnel.
Fandroids hate facts.
It's a sustainable energy project, not that anyone would have guessed that based on the summary.
Slashdot is an American site, we don't need any Metric measurements like "Rogers Center"s. How many Libraries of Congresses can it fill?
You'd think they would explain, you know, WHY THEY BUILT THE TUNNEL. They explain it's a "sustainable energy project", but they don't actually explain how the tunnel is used or what exactly it's for.
I always said Canadians were boring.
...it's boring.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Why did the driller drill the tunnel?
To get to the other side!
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Kind of funny that it ran into a timely detour because it hit a spot that WASN'T solid rock.
Amazing that level of optimization fails due to loose dirt.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
This is a story about a massive hole! Where's the goatse links?
The lead photo's caption says:
"Workers celebrate as the "Big Becky" tunnel boring machine makes its breakthrough in Niagara Falls May 13, 2011 for the new hydroelectric project there."
To be fair, the print is relatively small.
The 10.2 kilometer tunnel is 14.4 meters in diameter. Big Becky ate through 1.6 million cubic meters of rock to reach her goal.
Those sneaking Canadians digging a drug smuggling tunnel. It's either that or they plan to sneak their armies across the border and invade.
One of those.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You'd think by now there would be a standard way to drill loose material. (For example, I've heard of projects injecting water and freezing it, then dig through the ice-mix. But there must be a better solution by now; a recoverable geopolymer, injectable, texture of chalk when set?)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The project was to up upgrade the existing hydroelectric generating stations that currently generate a little over 1.9 Gigawatts of electricity from the waters of the Niagara River. The Niagara River (on which you will find Niagara Falls) flows between the two Great Lakes, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. It will add around 200 MW of power generating capacity. Thiswould have been a better news release article and explains a bit of the "green" projects in Ontario.
There: all you ever wanted to know about WTF the OP's linked article should have told you. FWIW, I agree that the OP's linked article is pretty lame. But that's nothing new for mainstream journalism. But I have to admit, Canadian news media that were once pretty damned good, are now pretty damned weak (Leaving out important contextual information, inability to spell, lack of grammar skills, just not understanding what the fuck they are reporting on and too lazy to find out).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
It's like when you bring 10 pickaxes, find mostly dirt, then you realize you foolishly forgot to make even a couple of shovels.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Mole-people. But as already been pointed out they're not very interesting to meet. You might say that they're.... (wait for it)... not very interesting.
What, what were you expecting me to type?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No mod points today so a simple thank you will have to suffice. I've recently been more and more annoyed at summaries lacking the essential point for the post to make any sense. Maybe I'm just getting old or something.
I would think drilling through loose material would be easy. Isn't the problem more about stopping the ceiling from dumping more material into the spot you just emptied?
But other tunnel boring projects do anticipate this sort of thing. I'll point to the city of Seattle and Washington state, which plan to replace an elevated freeway with a deep bore tunnel. Not through solid rock, but through glacial till material that is the equivalent of mixed dirt and gravel. Apparently the tunnel engineers don't think it will be a big problem to drill through it. (It will be hard on the drills themselves, but they can do it.) I think they're more concerned about the tunnel collapsing afterwards. Which was likely the concern at Niagara Falls too had they gone through something other than solid rock..
It's no surprise Americans want out of the US. We're just making it easier for them :)
That's enough rock, officials said, to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
So then its filled, right?
Have gnu, will travel.
No. But I dated a fat lady once who liked to be on top.
Have gnu, will travel.
...no. concrete is cement (generally portland cement) mixed with aggregate and often some other materials to control or alter various properties of the concrete or of its curing. so you got it backwards, and he'd still be pissed.
It's the stuff constantly dumping on the top of the borer instead of falling and being sucked up by its front end. These things run on rails, so except for the first few meters their workspace needs to be relatively clean.
It's also much harder to stabilize loose stuff for use as a tunnel, and almost impossible to trust your load calculations. Nice, hard rock eliminates all that. Just throw in some cleats, spray on the gunite to seal cracks and prevent loose crap from becoming debris, and go to lunch.
would stop with the stupid comparisons. The miners had enough puss in their blisters to fill a 1998 Toyota Tercel. There was enough media their to impeach a president. God when can we trust people to understand units of measurements without comparing it to something that would never happen (like filling a sports stadium with rock (unless it is AC/DC in the 80's then it could happen).
"That’s enough rock, officials said, to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto. And the cement used to line the tunnel would build a sidewalk stretching from Windsor to Quebec City."
The Americans, Burmese and Liberians have imperial, the rest of the world has metric. But now we have RogerCentre's as units of volume and Windsor-to-Quebec units of distance to understand when dealing with Canucks?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's a feed tunnel for the Sir Adam Beck power plant below the falls. It's the third tunnel built for that purpose, and adds 194MW of generating capacity.
There's so much plumbing in place at Niagara Falls that the falls can almost be turned off. There's a minimum water flow over the falls established by international agreement, but that's for aesthetics. At night, and during the tourist off season, more water is run through the hydroelectric plants.
Back in the 1980s, some boater was upstream of the falls, closer than he should have been, and lost power. He managed to run aground upstream of the falls. This was noticed at the Niagara Mohawk power plant control room, where an operator opened all feed and diversion tunnels and closed gates at the upstream weir, shutting off most of the falls until a rescue crew could fetch the boater.
Why did they detour for gravel? All you need to do is dig out the bottom block, then quickly place a torch on the floor. All the gravel above will be disintegrated as it falls onto the torch. They're professionals; aren't they supposed to know this sort of thing?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Why couldn't you just say it's "a bit over two leagues"?
No mod points today so a simple thank you will have to suffice. I've recently been more and more annoyed at summaries lacking the essential point for the post to make any sense. Maybe I'm just getting old or something.
No, I fully agree, excellent GP post. However, we are still a step ahead of (or is it behind?) several other news websites, where so many interesting-looking article titles turn out to be videos without accompanying text. That pisses me off just thinking about it.
Thatâ(TM)s enough rock, officials said, to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto. And the cement used to line the tunnel would build a sidewalk stretching from Windsor to Quebec City.
So I guess that's a large volume and a long distance, respectively? Whatever. Could be a strip mall and two neighboring towns for all I know. ;-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That's a picture of a crashed UFO (plus a couple of Canadians who found it).
is why they called a beast capable of chewing through kilometers of rock "Becky". I'd have thought "The Umber Hulk" or maybe "The Spiky Iron Fist" would have more subterranean-cred.
"Boring: see engineer." -- from the Yellow Pages...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
My eyes and brain must be getting old.. I read the title as "Turing machine Completes Hole Under Niagara Falls"...
Now we just have to get 10:1 women to men ratio to ensure sammiches in the future.
"She’s designed to go through solid rock, but encountered a stretch of loose, crumbling material that was unsuitable for tunneling. That forced a long and expensive detour." -sounds like an allegory for the US Government
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.