The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer

Episode
Episode 3
Broadcast Info
2018 (59 mins)
Description
London’s Victorian sewer network is at bursting point, and now a huge engineering project is underway to massively expand the capital’s capacity to deal with its own waste. In a major new three-part series, The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer puts cameras at the heart of the action, following workers across the capital for the past three years as they race to build the enormous tunnel on time and on budget. In this third and final episode of the series, tunnelling in central London finally begins. To complete the 16 mile main section of the super sewer, four bespoke tunnelling machines have been designed, and work is underway to prepare for their launch. In Battersea, one of the strategically most important sites on the project, the team must assemble the £15m tunnel boring machines on site. The 100-metre-long, 9-metre-diameter machines have been stripped down into component parts and sent from the manufacturer in France. Now the team has just three months to put together the 900 tonne jigsaws, before lowering them 60 metres into the ground, to begin tunnelling in earnest. Ahead of the machines setting off, the opening section of the tunnel in Battersea has to be burrowed by excavators and reinforced with spray concrete lining to prevent it collapsing. The team are on a tight two-month schedule, but when their tunnellers hit the 52 million-year-old compressed rock of the Upper Shelley Beds, progress is in peril. On the Thames, there’s a much-needed boost for the tug and barge industry, as super sewer project managers commit to moving 90% of waste material from the tunnels by river - and that means opportunities for ambitious crew who are looking to make a step up. But the mammoth engineering effort of the super sewer team isn’t good news for everyone on the Thames. The bright yellow amphibious ‘Duck Tours’ vehicles that take tourists through the city centre are forced off the river, as engineers need to take over the river bank they use to launch.
Genre
Architecture; Engineering; Technology

How to cite this record

The Open University, "The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/231020 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)