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The critical tech staying safe by going underground
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A wall of white granite towered above a small team of engineers gathered in a California quarry.
Key facts
- Freshly excavated caverns 100m underground sit next to stores that have been used for sparkling wine, apples and cheese in recent years
- Richard Little, infrastructure policy consultant and editor of the Journal of Critical Infrastructure Policy, remembers the latter days of the Cold War, when it was the threat of all-out nuclear war
- A lot of it was real Dr Strangelove stuff," says Little, referring to discussions around bunker-building during President Ronald Reagan's administration
- The January TBR test went well, though the machine "over-bored" slightly to the top and left of the tunnel, says Helming
Summary
"It's kind of like igniting a rocket," says Troy Helming, founder and chief executive of EarthGrid, as he describes the initially loud process of lighting up three plasma torches at the front of his company's machine. Those torches, set within a spinning head, soon quieten down as they produce a stream of super-heated plasma reaching 27,000C - significantly hotter than the surface of the Sun. During the California test this January, EarthGrid's cigar-shaped boring machine chewed through three metres of granite. "I got a little bit emotional watching it," adds the entrepreneur.