1. meters
and the biggest vessel we can put in is
366 meters in length
and so far a 49 and a half meter vessel
can come
in the amazing thing is that it means
that you can now fit an eiffel tower
lengthways in the locks
actually we could have built 19 eiffel
towers with the amount of steel that was
used
to reinforce these concrete walls 19 of
them
so it's pretty big project yes it's a
gigantic project
this new project began in january 2007.
responding to competition from the suez
canal
panama is expanding its shipping
channels transforming the legendary
culebra into a giant minefield
the biggest challenge though lay in the
construction of a third set of locks to
accommodate even larger ships
the new reinforced concrete chambers
have 16 sliding gates
each over 57 metres high
[Music]
after nine years of work panama opened
its new locks
tripling the capacity of cargo ships
which can now embark nearly 14 000
containers
[Music]
what did you include in the
specifications when you decided to build
the new locks
in the old logs we have locomotives
which helped position the vessel in the
middle of the chamber
here we did not use locomotives why
because it was too expensive
the walls would have to be heavier to
sustain the weight of the locomotives
more equipment more people also the
locomotives and the cables will have to
be too big for these type vessels
other than that the gates they're very
different
the engineers decided on an innovation
replacing miter gates with sliding ones
the gates ranged from 2 400 tons to 4
200 tons but only 15 of the weight
is what gets moved with the motors uh 85
of it is floating because each gate has
a floating compartment
that allows the gate to be like a ship
so it's not that heavy to move it
basically you can't mess with archimedes
principle
yes the last challenge of this project
was to preserve the water of lake getun