Constant high water has been eroding the city of Venice for decades. The plan to build a surge barrier against the tides that cause the so-called “Acqua Alta” has been underway for nearly forty years, but only now is the massive 7-billion-euro surge barrier nearing completion.
An in-depth look at the complex heavy lift process of taking an old ship, cutting it in half, and stretching it – an operation called Jumboisation, increasingly common as the demand in the lucrative cruise industry for bigger ships that can haul more and more passengers.
The story of the Antonov An-225, a relic of the cold war era aircraft made in the Ukraine that still flies challenging missions today. It is the biggest airplane in the world and holds the most air records for cargo lift.
Asian shipyards are building more ships than ever, but getting them to Western clients in pristine condition, unscratched and ready for action requires a very special kind of logistics vehicle to transport them across the world's oceans. Only a very few companies in the world operate ships that carry ships, as well as a number of other gigantic floating objects. This is the story of one of the heaviest lifters on the high seas today: The Hawk. Hawk is a semi-submersible heavy lift ship, designed to transport heavy loads around the world that conventional ships can't carry.
A giant of the sea roams the ocean, a huge ship with a massive crane. This is the Oleg Strashnov, one of the biggest monohull crane ships in the world, its mighty boom is able to lift up to 5000 tonnes of weight. It is not only a huge crane, but also an efficient multi tasker, integrated into a ship system that stays stable in the water whatever the weight, whatever the elevation. This is a true marine monster, a legend of the sea.
The Hebron project is a plan to exploit a 700 million barrel heavy oil field off the east coast of Canada with the world’s largest oil platform. The Italian company Fagioli was employed to transport the crew quarters from Korea to Bull Arm, near St John’s in Canada, and install all the component parts onto the giant platform. It was a record breaking journey and epic effort to load the huge structure onto the massive Dockwise Vanguard and transport it all the way across the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal and up the coast of North America.
The full story of the engineering behind the MOSE (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, Experimental Electromechanical Module) the system of rows of mobile gates installed in the lagoon around the city of Venice to protect it from flooding. These gates create a wall that can isolate the Venetian Lagoon temporarily from the Adriatic Sea during acqua alta high tides.
The story of how a massive arched shelter was slid into place over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site in Ukraine. The inside story of a unique engineering feat at the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, as technicians move an enormous roof over the still irradiated remains of the plant's No 4 reactor. The superstructure is intended to contain radiation from the nuclear waste within the exploded reactor. Chernobyl's reactor No 4 exploded on April 26, 1986, and over the ensuing 10 days, its nuclear fuel continued to burn, issuing clouds of poisonous radiation and contaminating as much as three quarters of the European continent, hitting northern Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, especially hard.
The Ariane 5 is the evolution of a family of rocket launchers that started when Europe's space industry was in its infancy. This massive launch vehicle, is built all over Europe but assembled here in the Cathedral at the Arianegroup construction site at Les Mureaux. It is a design that has successfully completed 85 launch missions in the last quarter of a century; it is due to be replaced by the more versatile and competitive Ariane 6 within the next 2 years.
Far below the Brenner Pass, construction is underway on the Brenner Base Tunnel, the longest underground railway connection in the world, which cuts right through the heart of Europe’s Alps. We go inside to follow one of Europe’s largest work sites that will help connect Scandinavia to the mediterranean Sea and cut the passenger time on the ride between Austrian and Italy from 80 minutes to a mere 25 minutes A joint project between Italy, Austria and the EU, the Brenner Base Tunnel is actually two main tunnels, each 8.1 meters wide so train traffic runs only one way, with side tunnels every 333 meters and an exploratory tunnel for construction and maintenance. The new line runs almost straight and nearly horizontal between Innsbruck and Franzenfeste in Italy. The sharp curves, inclines and declines of the 150-year-old existing Brenner Railway will soon be a thing of the past.
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