Original subtitles

The Panama Canal.

It's a marvel of the modern world.

At 50 miles long,

this man-made passage slices through a continent

and unites the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

But now, a century after its creation,

the Panama Canal is too small.

A race to expand the canal is on.

MAN 1: With the amount of excavation that we're doing

this is a mega-project.

MAN 2: We are literally re-writing the book

on building lock projects.

MAN 3: The Panama Canal expansion will be a game changer.

WOMAN: I have to see it to believe it.

Well, I actually saw it, and I believe it.

Now, on a special edition of Modern Marvels,

the Panama Canal gets supersized.

( boat horn blows )

Every morning, the Panama Canal opens for business.

For over 100 years, this icon of engineering

has operated with little change.

Crowds gather to see

one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

The giant shortcut connecting

the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

is a crossroad of global trade.

Right now, about three percent of world commerce

comes through the Panama Canal.

We put between 38 and 42 ships per day

and we operate 24 hours, seven days a week.

The ships carry millions of tons of cargo...

everything from cars,

to fuel,

to food.

But as the legendary Panama Canal

turns 100 years old,

it's facing a crisis.

A new breed of giant vessels called post-Panamax

is threatening the future of the Panama Canal.

Post-Panamax container vessels are collosal transporters.

They can carry an astonishing 14,000 containers.

There's just one gigantic problem.

They're too big to fit through the canal.

And that is placing the canal in jeopardy.

MIKE: The larger your vessel is, the more efficient it is.

And post-Panamax ships,

that are the best and most economical,

cannot go through the existing locks.

As the post-Panamax becomes the new standard

for global shipping,

they're bypassing the Panama Canal,

threatening the very livelihood of Panama.

ILYA: The Panama Canal is a big revenue provider

for the country of Panama.

We generate $2 billion a year.

So it can provide for education, for health, for school.

For all the things that governments need to provide.

If trade moves away from the Panama Canal,

it would be a big blow to our country.

We needed to do something dramatic.

We needed to supersize the canal.

To help save the canal,

one of the largest construction projects in history

is underway.

The creation of a supersized Panama Canal.

One big enough to last the next 100 years.

The plan is to build new locks

right next to the original locks.

ILYA: When we were studying this project,

we analyzed, "How about if we just expand the existing canal?"

but that's a revenue provider,

so that's why we decided we need to go

with the third set of locks.

At the Pacific entrance,

they must construct a massive, three-step lock complex

that will raise a post-Panamax ship

up to 90 feet.

Next, they must deepen Lake Gatun,

at the center of the canal,

so bigger vessels can safely cross

the Isthmus of Panama.

And finally, on the Atlantic side,

they have to build another set of locks

to get the ships back down to sea level.

The task is monumental.

Fifty miles of construction and dredging

across a continent.

And it all begins with excavation.

On the Pacific side,

the team is hard at work

clearing a path for the new locks.

They must dig a trench a quarter-mile wide...

14 stories deep,

and a mile long.

Standing in their way:

30 million cubic yards of dense basalt rock.

CHRIS: Yeah, we've got some hard rock here, for sure.

So, uh, it requires a lot of blasting.

The key, particularly with blasting,

is to not excavate too much material.

So the blasts have to be precisely designed

so that we're not over-excavating material.

Precision blasting requires bore holes to be drilled

to an exact depth.

A demolition team then moves in,

delicately placing the explosives

and connecting the charges to a lead wire.

Once at a safe distance,

the foreman arms the detonator...

waiting for the "all clear,"

( indistinct radio chatter )

and turns the switch.

With the rock and soil loosened,

it's time to dig it up and carry it out.

The beast of the excavation site is the Terex.

It can devour 60,000 pounds of rock with every scoop.

LUIS: With the amount of excavaction that we're doing here,

it's the size of the Central Park in New York.

This is a mega-project.

To haul out all this dirt,

the excavator loads up heavy-duty mining trucks.

Their oversized wheels help them shoulder tons

and tons of rock.

LUIS: I used to call them the "Fisher Price,"

you know? Little trucks.

But, let me tell you, they move a lot of dirt.

When they are finished, the new excavation

will accomplish a feat

similar in scale to the building of the original canal.

Over a hundred years ago,

the original French canal builders

planned to dig a 50-mile, sea-level passage

across Panama.

But their plan failed.

Over 20,000 workers died trying to build that passage.

When America took over the canal,

engineers took a different path.

Instead of digging a trench across Panama,

they flooded the entire middle of the country,

creating Lake Gatun.

And built locks that raised ships

to the higher level of the lake.

In 1914, surmounting seemingly impossible odds,

the Panama Canal opened for business.

Today, on the Atlantic side,

crews are excavating a mile-long trench

for the new locks.

CHRIS: The rock here is much softer than the Pacific side,

so we don't have to do any blasting here at all.

Precision excavators slice through

the Atlantic soil like butter,

digging almost straight down,

creating sheer cliffs in their path.

CHRIS: Some of the steepest cuts that we have here

at the Atlantic site, are over 350-feet high.

And those are near vertical.

But softer rock doesn't mean the job here is any easier.

This region has a seven-month rainy season.

And when the rains mix with the Atlantic soils,

things can get messy.

CHRIS: If it gets wet, it turns to mush, more or less,

and it's a sloppy soup of material.

We've had several machines that have sunk above the axles

in the muck.

Despite these punishing conditions,

crews press on with their mission.

To reach their goal,

men and machine will dig for 9 years.

MIKE: We have an entire army of dump trucks and excavators.

It's a tremendous activity.

But their struggle is only a prelude to the big show.

Once excavation is finished,

massive machines will perform Herculean tasks,

to build the largest set of locks on the planet.

In Panama, the upgrade to the world's biggest shortcut

is underway.

Construction teams are carving a wider passage

across the country

to create a supersized Panama Canal.

In order to complete their mission,

crews must build two lock structures

in each side of the country.

One on the Atlantic and one on the Pacific,

to raise ships from the ocean to Lake Gatun.

But the challenge is monumental.

At a mile long and 10-stories tall,

these are the largest lock structures in the world.

To build this colossus,

they turn to one of the most powerful forces on Earth:

People.

LUIS: Right now, we have about 2,500 people working on the site.

At full capacity, you want to see 4,500 people

working in this place.

This army of builders

raised the locks one foot at a time.

But working at this scale demands a relentless flow

of raw materials.

To get the job done,

workers rely on tower cranes for support.

LUIS: At this moment we have 14 towers working

and giving support to different areas.

The tower cranes can lift concrete,

steel, anything that is heavy,

to 14-stories high.

One of the key elements they move is steel,

the structural core of the lock complex.

LUIS: Right now we're using about 200,000 tons

of reinforcing steel.

With that amount of steel we can build about 18 times

the Eiffel Tower in France.

The forest of steel inside the locks

is the skeleton of the complex.

But before the steel can be installed, it must be shaped.

JOHN: We have a big facility where all the bar is detailed, cut,

and bended, transported in trucks,

and then placed at the site.

But steel has an enemy:

Saltwater.

If saltwater comes into contact with steel,

it will corrode and fail.

A potential catastrophe.

That's where concrete comes in.

Concrete is used to wrap the steel skeleton

in a watertight protective layer.

JOHN: I have been in this field for 25 years

and this is the hardest concrete I have ever worked with.

It is designed to withstand seawater

for a period of a 100 years.

To make enough of this 100-year concrete,

the Panama Canal expansion project,

built a concrete plant right on the job site.

MIKE: There's twice as much concrete

being placed in the Atlantic and Pacific locks

as in the Hoover Dam. It's a tremendous volume.

The process begins at the grinding plant.

Trucks dump freshly excavated rock into the crushing system.

Giant tumblers break down the rock into aggregate,

the first ingredient in the concrete recipe.

Concrete is part aggregate, sand, cement and water.

In concrete making, temperature is key.

It must be kept in the 50 to 60 degree range.

But in the scorching hot climate of Panama,

they need one secret ingredient:

Ice.

Ice keeps the concrete at the right temperature

when it's poured.

But it can only do its job for so long.

LUIS: Whenever we leave the plant, we place the concrete

into the dump trucks.

We need to take the concrete into the pouring site,

we only have 22 minutes.

That's when the race starts.

To ensure the concrete gets to where it's needed,

as fast as possible, an army of specialized

concrete pouring machines stands at the ready.

One of the workhorses of the site is the telebelt.

LUIS: It looks like a fire truck.

The telebelt is just a big truck with a long conveyer belt

that will deliver the concrete into the pouring area.

A steady supply allows the telebelt to dump

over 25,000 gallons of concrete per hour.

Because each pour requires

over half a million gallons of concrete.

For pours at the very top of the locks,

crews turn to a specialized machine called the putzmeister.

LUIS: The putzmeister is a pump

where you can move the arm to reach the hard places

where you're pouring.

The 200 foot arm is controlled by an operator,

guiding the nozzle to exactly the right place.

The critical last step:

construction teams sink industrial vibrators

into the mix, stirring out any air bubbles.

Together, the concrete and steel

create a super strong lock structure.

And that structure has to be extra tough,

because it lies within an earthquake zone.

MIKE: On the Pacific side,

we have faults that are passing within 50 meters

of the third set of locks.

The new locks must withstand a catastrophic 7.1 earthquake.

To withstand these intense forces,

engineers designed the new canal to a higher standard

than ever before.

MIKE: We've used state of the practice techniques

that have been built and developed specifically for this project.

But have general applications throughout the industry.

We are literally rewriting the book

on how to design large lock projects.

The new lock design raises the bar

for the next generation of mega-projects.

But their challenges have just begun.

They still must build the world's biggest gates.

Coming up, on Modern Mar

After years of hard work,

the Panama Canal is showing signs of progress.

Excavation is complete.

And the lock walls are nearly finished.

But the construction team still has to tackle

the most critical piece of the new expansion: The Gates.

We have the very large rolling gates.

Four are currently onsite here at the Atlantic,

twelve more will be coming over the course of the next year.

These gates are like the Swiss Army knives

of the system.

They perform so many different important functions

for the locks.

They open and close the chambers

to allow the passages of the ships.

They must withstand seismic loads.

It's a very active earthquake situation here in Panama.

They also must be able to withstand ship impact.

With all these requirements,

building the tallest gates in the world is a mega challenge.

Half a world away from Panama,

in a town north of Venice, Italy,

master technicians are rising to the challenge.

NICK: The gates are fabricated in a shipyard

because for all intents and purposes

they are designed and built like a large ship.

Workers begin by building the internal superstructure

of the gate.

Starting with steel I-beams for strength.

These open beams are designed to withstand

tremendous water pressure.

Workers then weld the outer plating

to the superstructure,

creating a single module

the size of two large school buses.

The last step:

Gantry cranes stack modules together,

to form a single mega-gate.

A finished gate stands 100 feet tall and weighs 3,000 tons.

SERGI: They are heavy. But they cannot be that heavy for the operation.

So in order to move the gates, we need buoyancy.

In the lower part of the gate, you see a closed area.

Like ships, the gates are hollow with sealed compartments inside,

so they float.

This reduces their operating weight in water.

So they can be quickly opened and closed.

In operation, the real weight of the gates is only 10 percent of the weight in dry conditions.

Now that these colossal gates are finished, it's time to move them.

from Italy to Panama.

Because the gates are so heavy and so unwieldy,

they really can't be lifted conveniently or feasibly with a crane.

And so they have to be handled with these large multi-wheeled vehicles

that carry them from the bottom like a large caterpillar.

Their journey begins on the back of a unique vehicle called an SPMT.

LORE: SPMT stands for "self-propelled modular trailer."

The pieces with the wheels underneath are connected to one engine,

and that can carry more than 5,000 tonnes.

It takes four SPMTs to carry one gate.

Everything is operated by a worker with a joy stick control,

who walks alongside as the giant gates are taken to a waiting barge.

LORE: When the gate is on the barge,

we tow the barge to the next port

where a big heavy transport vessel is moored,

and there we roll over the gate onto the vessel.

At the Port of Trieste, a special vessel is waiting.

There are only five ships in the world capable of transporting the gates.

They are called heavy load, semi-submersible vessels.

Just the simple maneuver of getting it on the vessel,

requires the semi-submersible. It's able to sink itself to get in underneath the gate itself,

and then it raises itself back up to pick up the load of the gate.

Once the four gates are loaded and secured onto the semi-submersible vessel,

the 6,000-mile journey to Panama can begin.

It's the first time in history

that such big and heavy equipment has been sailing the Atlantic Sea.

If you were transiting the gates across the ocean and you hit a storm,

well, the nightmare scenario is that one or more of the gates could topple into the ocean,

or the entire thing could turn over and sink.

Getting the gates across the Atlantic is a daunting task.

But an even tougher one looms ahead:

placing these giants at the bottom of the Panama Canal.

More than a century after the Panama Canal opened for business,

its mega-upgrade is nearing completion.

In the punishing heat of Panama,

construction teams have been working around the clock...

for seven years.

The canal locks: the most complicated pieces of the new upgrade are taking shape.

But there's still one important part of the puzzle left:

installing the jumbo-sized lock gates.

After a month at sea, a shipment of gates has finally arrived from Italy.

SERGI: Here you can see the first four gates, and we need 16 for our project.

Eight in the Atlantic side, eight in the Pacific side.

But getting the gates from the ship into the canal zone poses a new set of challenges.

( helicopter hovering )

The 3,000-ton gates were too heavy for the soft Atlantic soil.

Solution? Build a special row for the one-way trip.

NICK: It's basically like an airport runway.

It can carry the weight of the gates when they're being installed,

but it is a temporary work, and so it has to be demolished after the fact.

Workers move the gate along this mile-long highway,

one inch at a time.

After a careful trip, they finally arrive at the lock gate recess,

but maneuvering the gate into its new home will be the trickiest part of the journey.

NICK: The challenge of installing these gates into their designated recess,

is not too dissimilar from trying to move a couch

into your apartment through a narrow doorway.

I think if you get halfway in, you're home, but it's a very tight tolerance.

Inches.

The team depends on the self-propelled modular trailer

to negotiate the hairpin turn.

Its wheels can turn individually,

or all in unison.

NICK: The tight tolerances and the very close quarters make it very difficult,

and it has to be done very carefully and very slowly

in order to ensure that there's no damage to the gates themselves

or to the structures that they're being housed in.

Once the gates are settled into their recesses, it's time to build the drive system.

It will move them.

NICK: There's a large machinery room that sits right behind the gates,

and that's where the motors and the winches,

and the cable equipment that move the gates are housed.

Workers install powerful electric motors.

that will be the engine of the drive system.

Steel rails at the top of the lock walls will guide the gate in and out of the recess.

The drive wagon is lifted onto the rails,

and connected to the gate, readying the system for operation.

NICK: The rolling gates move in and out of the lock chamber. It's a bit like a cable car.

It grabs onto the cable, and then moves back and forth in the recess.

As the gate starts to roll, a wheel at the bottom guides the gate across the lock.

But with so many moving parts, the rolling gates could become

the Achilles heel of the canal system.

The original canal has 750-ton swinging gates.

that open and close like a pair of doors.

These gates, which have operated for 100 years,

are the canal's weak point.

NICK: If the gate gets damaged on the old canal,

they have to basically shut that lane down,

do a complete investigation as to the extent of the damage of the gate,

if it's more serious, they have to schedule it to be removed and taken out of service.

To compensate for the gate's limitations,

the original locks are designed for two lanes of traffic.

If one lane closes, the second lane keeps the canal open.

But the new locks are just one lane, no backup.

NICK: With only a single lane for transit,

if there's any problem with the gate that can't be managed,

then it is down and traffic stops completely.

It's a serious issue.

The challenge is to design a gate system that is completely reliable.

SERGI: All the gate's design concept is to provide easy maintenance.

There are 12 compartments.

It's like a submarine.

In fact, if a ship is impacting the gate,

and water is coming inside the gate,

we still will have enough buoyancy to bring the gate inside the recess.

The giant gate recess doubles as a repair bay for a damaged gate.

Okay, you see over there, like a window?

In this part of the gate, underneath this window,

we will have some structure to support the gate, you need maintentance.

So the gate will come into the recess,

and it will be standing on these four windows.

One safely on its supports, crews can drain the water from the recess,

and begin repairs.

But even with one gate down, canal operations will continue without interruption.

That's because the upgraded canal is being fitted with pairs of gates.

NICK: With the redundant gate system, with two gates in each lock head,

this allows for continuous operation with the other gate.

while vessel operations continue unabated.

The paired gate design is remarkably reliable.

Built to last for the next 50 years,

they will keep the canal open over 99 percent of the time.

NICK: And then finally, as if there weren't enough constraints on these gates,

they have to be designed so that when they're in the closed position,

you can drive emergency and maintenance vehicles across them like a bridge.

The gates are only one part of the lock system that must be failsafe.

The other piece of the canal that is critical is the filling and emptying of the locks...

with water.

The pieces of the new Panama Canal are coming together.

The lock structures are complete.

and the gates are moving into their recesses.

But soon, these pieces will have to face one of the most powerful elements on Earth...

water.

MIKE: Water drives the whole operation.

Without water, the Panama Canal would not be possible.

When a ship enters the locks, water from a higher level

flows into the lower level of the lock chamber.

This raises the ship.

When the ship gets to the other side,

the process reverses.

But with the new canal, engineers will have to take their design

to the next level.

MIKE: Our big challenge with the third set of locks is to move a lot of water extremely fast.

Each lock chamber is long enough to take the entire Empire State Building inside of it.

And yet, at the same time, we have to be able to fill it up in 11 minutes.

That is very fast for a lock of this size.

With water filling the lock chamber this fast, there could be problems. Big problems.

MIKE: These ships are so much larger,

that if you have a small variation in the elevation of the water,

the ship could be damaged.

How do you fill a lock fast and do it safely?

The secret lies deep within the bowels of the lock's complex.

Engineers have designed a network of underground tunnels

called culverts to tame the raging waters.

We are inside one of the very large culverts that take the water into the locks.

What I'm doing with the water here is making sure that as it goes into the lock chamber,

it's very smooth.

When they open the valves, water surges into the culvert system.

MIKE: As the water actually comes out the valves, it's almost 40 miles an hour.

It's very fast. You wouldn't want to be in these culverts when they open the valves.

The enormous size of the main culvert helps to slow down the speeding water.

But because it's still moving too fast to be safe,

engineers built a specially designed hairpin turn.

The water is coming from behind me in this direction.

It will take a turn to the right and then go through this port here,

out into the lock chamber at a nice, slow speed.

The water enters the chamber through 40 ports at the bottom of the lock walls.

40 smaller openings instead of one large one delivers the water slowly and evenly.

MIKE: These ports are nice and low, well below the underside of the ships.

As the water rises up in the lock chamber, it should be like a mill pond,

very smooth at the surface.

With such a large volume of water pouring into the chamber,

controlling the water level is critical.

MIKE: A ship will be raised 25 to 30 feet in the lower chamber.

As soon as it's raised to the same elevation as the middle chamber,

the lock gates can then open, and they have to be almost exactly the same level,

within four inches, otherwise the gates cannot open.

To get the water levels to match, engineers had to design a control system.

one that surpasses the original.

When the canal opened in 1914,

its water control system was cutting-edge.

Analog water gauges helped canal operators see the water levels in the lock chambers.

Built-in safeties made it impossible to open gates out of sequence.

Today, a new canal is taking the control room into the 21st century.

Right now, we are starting to build the infrastructure

for the central nervous system of the Panama Canal locks.

Workers start by installing the backbone of the electronic system.

Heavy duty tubes, packed with fiber optic cables.

GABRIEL: We have over 1,000 miles of electrical cable, 60, 000 terminations,

all the elements that will allow us to control our monitor the Panama Canal locks.

Today, with ships so massive, the new locks have to be failsafe.

preventing even the most unlikely event.

( steamboat honks )

( shouting over PA system )

The new canal's control system alerts operators of any problems,

switching to a backup system if needed.

GABRIEL: Everything in this project is duplicated.

From the sensors to the wires to the routes, so you can actually lose one system

and you can continue to operate the locks.

When completed, the Panama Canal expansion will have the digital infrastructure

of an entire city.

All of this is coming together to create a collosal shortcut that will change the world.

But there is still one big hurdle left to overcome,

one that could jeopardize the entire canal operation.

A new chapter of the Panama Canal is about to begin

with the opening of the new locks.

Getting to this moment required the skill and determination of thousands of workers.

Together, they had moved mountains...

( dynamite )

poured miles of concrete, and assembled components from across the globe.

But engineers still have to overcome one final hurdle.

how the new canal uses the water from Lake Gatun.

At the mouth of the lock complex,

intakes suck in 120 million gallons of water with each passage.

MIKE: The third set of locks requires a tremendous amount of water.

Moving that water is a major design challenge.

A network of underground passages channel the flow of water

between the lake and the lock chamber.

But if you thought pumps were pushing water through these tunnels, think again.

The entire system of the new canal relies on gravity alone.

Two-story-high gate valves are the heart of the gravity system.

When a valve opens, water moves from the higher level to the lower level of the lock.

GREG: It's really amazing that we're moving approximately 120 million gallons

through the lock chamber in 10 minutes.

This is all done just by opening gates and closing gates.

But with the new locks, there is a big challenge.

With so much water swallowed up with each passage,

they will empty Lake Gatun,

the sole source of fresh water for Panama's largest city.

To solve this problem, engineers will have to cut the lock's water use by 60%.

This is the Atlantic lock's upper chamber water saving basin you see, behind me.

That's the area that will allow for the 60% savings of water for the project itself.

Water saving basins are a new approach to canal design.

They are essentially giant reservoirs that collect and reuse water

in the locking process.

And how the water gets moved from lock to basin

is truly a marvel of hydraulic engineering.

With the water saving basin, we're able to transfer that water to these basins

and that water is saved and filled back up into the chamber

for future use for the next ship.

So we actually can save about 60% of that water that would normally be lost

by just reusing it back and forth through the lock chamber.

With the addition of the water saving basins,

the new canal will consume less water than the existing canal,

even though it is three times larger,

making it one of the great achievements of this supersized upgrade.

GREG: You know, this is just one example

of how we've made something bigger than it's ever been done before.

We've done this in the lock walls, the gates.

This whole project's been a series of biggests and bests,

and it sets the standard for going forward on lots of different other projects.

And if everything goes as planned,

the Panama Canal expansion will transform global commerce.

LUIS: I think it's gonna be great for everyone, not just for the Panamanians,

because by expanding our canal, we are solving a problem to the whole world.

ALAN: Today, container ships that are significantly larger go to the West Coast

and then they use rail to go to the East Coast,

and that's a cost issue. It's a time issue.

Once the canal is done, the container fleet can transfer through to the Atlantic side.

You're gonna change world trade.

The effects of the new set of locks will ripple across America.

Ports in Miami, Virginia, Baltimore,

and New York are all modifying their facilities for these larger ships.

Panama Canal expansion will be a game changer for global commerce.

Some people will try to take as much advantage as they can.

Some people will feel threatened by it,

but everyone will have to rethink their entire business model

once this project goes into operation.

IYLA: So you never know what the market is gonna do in the future.

The locks are supposed to last 100 years.

But we also left some real estate

for the fourth set of locks if we ever have to build one.

Over 100 years ago, the opening of the Panama Canal made the world a smaller place.

Today, the new supersized canal is doing the same.

A giant shortcut between two oceans remains a powerful symbol of human achievement.

And when the water begins to flow,

a new modern marvel will take its rightful place in history.