“Getting worked up about the demonstration won't help,” says Martijn Smitt, managing director of Strukton Betonbouw. “It's better to enjoy the sight of all the fishing vessels out on the water. It's not for nothing that the contacting party carries responsibility for external risks such as this. The fishermen are calling for better compensation.”
Under the name of Mergor – ‘to immerse’ in Latin – Strukton plays a leading role in laying the longest and deepest immersion tunnel in the world. Over the next three-year period, the Dutch immersion specialist will be linking eighteen tunnel sections together to create a 3.2-km-long tunnel under the waters off the major South Korean Port of Busan for an amount of €70 million. At a toll of US$10, people passing through the Busan-Geoje Fixed Link in 2011 will be driving at a depth of 50 metres below the Korean straits.
The immersed tunnel at Busan is part of a plan to open up the Geoje peninsula. Two cable bridges with respective spans of 475 and 230 metres will also link the two shorelines. Slowly, the 5 to 102-metre-high pylons are going up. The final piece in the new connection will be an immersion tunnel so as not to obstruct the busy shipping traffic. The South Korean army also has its interests. Thanks to the tunnel, the naval port will remain accessible even if the bridges come under fire.
South Korea is going to great lengths executing the €3.5 billion project in order to further develop tourism along the popular coastline of Geoje. And the shipping industry has convincing arguments too. The newly developed Newport dock area and two of the country's biggest shipyards will benefit enormously from reducing the travelling time to Busan from 2.5 hours to 50 minutes.
Barring unforeseen obstacles, Strukton will on Wednesday manage to transport the fourth and - provisionally - last tunnel section across a distance of 36 kilometres to where it will be held safely close to the immersion site. Each of the sections of tunnel transported so far measure 180 metres in length because the main contractor Daewoo is in a hurry. Technically speaking, the sections would usually have been long enough at around 100 to 120 metres. Chief executive Bo-Hyun Yang expects to raise around US$300,000 a day in toll charges once the tunnel project is complete. Over a 40-year period, every day will count.
Source: Cobouw, 23 October 2007