The Tunnelling Podcast

This week we are taking you to Virginia and looking at The Big Walker and East River Mountain Tunnels, which burrow through the Appalachian Mountains and cross the border between two states. This impressive project completed 50 years ago, and was the most expensive construction job that West Virginia Department of Highways and Virginia Department of Transport (VDOT) had ever taken on.

Photo credit: Eddie Read, VDOT

If the Ancient Egyptians had made use of nuclear fuel, their engineers would have needed to find a solution to store the waste not just to today, but far into the future.

Fortunately, modern engineers are up to the task. The most advanced project for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel is ‘Onkalo’ in Finland. 

Onkalo means ‘small cave’ or ‘cavity’, a humble name for one of the most significant efforts of underground construction ever undertaken.

Guest

Sophie Haapalehto, Rock Mechanics Engineer, Posiva

Supporter
Support for this month’s episode came from Tsurumi UK. Tsurumi UK provides a range of superior quality, highly durable single and 3-phase submersible pumps that can withstand the toughest of conditions in tunnelling and construction projects.

A career spent in the evolving field of ventilation has yielded a number of insights to Mosen’s Fathi Tarada. 

In this episode we tell the story of how the Bahrain oil industry is to thank for a man fighting to bring tunnelling closer to Net Zero, how new ventilation technologies could influence tunnel design, and how no one has yet thought to write a comprehensive textbook on such a critical field.

Please email Fathi Tarada if you have any input or queries about his proposed book on tunnel ventilation: [email protected]

Guest

Fathi Tarada, Managing Director, Mosen

Sponsor

Support for this month’s episode came from Tsurumi UK. Tsurumi UK provides a range of superior quality, highly durable single and 3-phase submersible pumps that can withstand the toughest of conditions in tunnelling and construction projects.

High Speed 2 is the UK’s latest transport megaproject. Billed as the largest ever investment in the country’s rail, its first phase will link London in the south via 230km of high-speed rail with Birmingham in the West Midlands.

With a focus on innovation and new technologies available, the project is determined to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Immersive virtual reality, emotion sensing, and eye-tracking will come together to revolutionise the way we design stations.

Guests

Heather Donald, Innovation Manager, High Speed 2

Carolina Morales, Project Manager, WSP in the UK

David Watts, Managing Director, Mima

Kevin White, Technical Director – Information Modelling, WSP in the UK

Sponsor

Support for this month’s episode came from Tsurumi UK. Tsurumi UK provides a range of superior quality, highly durable single and 3-phase submersible pumps that can withstand the toughest of conditions in tunnelling and construction projects.

Faced with a need to free surface space for their expanding town, and a reliance on the local quarry for foundation material, the people the town of Drammen in Norway came up with a unique solution.

A spiral tunnel would provide all of the granite they needed, would allow them to close the quarry, and would even bring tourists from nearby Oslo to drive the 1.5km mountain corkscrew.

Now 60 years later, a project to upgrade the tunnel to modern standards has also added a few extras to the experience. 

In this episode we speak to a prominent Norwegian geoscientist who grew up in Drammen when the tunnel was originally being built. This is the story of the ITA Award runner up and CNN’s sixth most spectacular tunnel in the world, the Drammen Spiral, and also a story of the past and present of Norwegian tunnelling culture.

Photo credit: Peter Fiskerstrand

Guest

Eivind Grøv, Chief Scientist, SINTEF

Resources

The Norwegian Tunnelling Society releases annual statistics on the amount of tunnelling within its borders. For the latest report, click here

For a drive-through video of the Spiral, click here

For the CNN article on the world’s greatest tunnels, click here

Sponsor

Support for this month’s episode came from Tsurumi UK. Tsurumi UK provides a range of superior quality, highly durable single and 3-phase submersible pumps that can withstand the toughest of conditions in tunnelling and construction projects.

Vienna, the capital city of Austria is also known worldwide as The City of Music and this musical metropolis is fine tuning the way that it constructs underground. In order to expand its metro system it has turned to the use of hydraulic props to hold back the pressure from the earth during construction of a critical new station. These innovative supports create less waste than other temporary measures. Less waste means less carbon and less carbon means less global warming.

Guests

Peter Richardson, Director Major Projects, Europe, Groundforce

Tony Gould, Consultant and former Technical Director, Groundforce 

Mark Whitmore, General Manager for Major Projects division of Groundforce Shorco

Brisbane has an Achilles heel. But luckily, it is one that engineers are on the verge of correcting. As the capital of Queensland, a resource-rich state in Australia’s northeast, it is a vital hub for the economy and the movement of people around the country.

The problem lies with the iconic river that bears the city’s name. Unlike other large cities, which boast dozens of crossings, the Brisbane River has only a few. And of these, there is only one major rail bridge in the centre which takes all the north south traffic.

In this episode we are looking at the Cross River Rail project, a new 10.2km rail line through the centre of Brisbane to take pressure off the existing network.

Guest

Jeremy Kruger, Project Director – Tunnel, Stations & Development, Cross River Rail Delivery Authority

Resources

A website containing Cross River Rail alignment graphics can be found here

For more information on the challenges facing megaproject completion, our three-part miniseries on the topic begins here

In this episode we join Yannis Vazaios on site in North Acton, London. Yannis is a Geotechnical Engineer working on High Speed 2’s Victoria Road site as the designer’s representative.

But this story begins 15 years ago in Athens. Yannis finds himself taking a degree he did not expect but nonetheless is falling in love with. It will take him from his native Greece, to Canada, and then to the UK.

We will learn how engineering gets him out of guard duty during his military service, his advice to young engineers on how to succeed in industry and academia, and the power of making your job your hobby.

Guest

Yannis Vazaios, Senior Geotechnical Engineer, Arup

The San Fernando Earthquake of 9 February 1971 caught experts completely off-guard. The event galvanised a generation of engineers, and improvements are still being made today that can be traced back to that one day.

One recognisable figure from the tunnelling industry today, was still in education at the time. He had earned his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Cornell University in 1970 and was working on his master’s at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign.

He can look back on a career spent in over- and underground infrastructure, and has been fascinated by disaster resilience ever since the early years of his career…

Guest

Tom O’Rourke, Thomas R. Briggs Professor Emeritus, Cornell University

Resources

The Cornell University Large Scale Lifelines Testing Facility can be found here

For more information on the Gateway Program, click here

An engineering report on the effects of the San Fernando Earthquake can be found here

And the USGS remembers the earthquake 50 years on.

Every good superhero universe has its origins story. Hagerbach’s begins with Rudolf Amberg, looking to innovate and find new efficiency savings for his iron mine. So began a 50-year journey from testing equipment and explosives, to fire and tunnel safety simulations, and ever more creative uses for underground space.

Ultimately the mining industry in Switzerland failed, but Hagerbach survived, and is still an iconic test site for the mining and tunnelling industries.

This year it will celebrate its history and look towards its future with the NXT 50 Festival. And some of the ideas on display will push the use of underground space to greater heights than ever before.

Guests

Antonia Cornaro, Business Development Manager, Amberg Engineering

Felix Amberg, President, Amberg Group

Michael Kompatscher, CEO, Hagerbach Test Gallery

Resources

For more information on the Hagerbach NXT 50 Festival, click here

For a previous episode of The Tunnelling Podcast that covered underground farming in Hagerbach, click here and a video explaining the concept can be found here

For information about Mission Earth First click here

For the International Tunnelling Association’s Committee for Underground Space, click here

And to learn more about Edge Computing Underground, click here 

Supporters

The Amberg Group is a unique knowledge, engineering and technology provider of logistics and infrastructures for smart cities, hubs and networks through innovative combinations of above and underground space usage. Its products and services cover in a digitalized manner the entire life cycle of the infrastructures and all engineering and technology aspects.

ACO is the leading supplier for drainage solutions in the building industry. Drainage Solutions for the tunnelling industry is one of the core competencies of ACO. The combination of unique materials with the ACO safety concept for tunnels offers the optimal solution for every project. The prefabricated systems are built to the individual design of every project and ensures an easy and fast installation.