4 ms·
That's "for a hole you can barely crawl through". The 10-m "stage 3" tunnel would consume 1.38 gigawatts per day per km, or 57,500 kwh per meter. By contrast,
by stevenjgarner 4y ago
That's "for a hole you can barely crawl through". The 10-m "stage 3" tunnel would consume 1.38 gigawatts per day per km, or 57,500 kwh per meter. By contrast, the energy consumption of a traditional Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) is about 356 kWh per meter [0], or 0.62% of the plasma boring robot. Let's get this in perspective, the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona is the largest in the US with three reactors and a total capacity of just under 4 GW. Certainly not what I would characterize as "super-cheap tunnel tech".
[0] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82422936.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82422936.pdf