Tunnel boring completed for China's deepest undersea tunnel at Pearl River

An ultra-large-diameter shield tunnel boring machine has completed all 1,468 ring excavations, reaching the predetermined mileage, as part of China's deepest underwater tunnel - the Pearl River Tunnel, a section of the Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway, according to the official WeChat account of the Shenzhen city government in South China's Guangdong Province on Tuesday.

The progress marked a milestone in the construction of Guangdong's Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway.

The tunnel spans 13.69 kilometers, with engineers using two tunnel boring machines to excavate toward each other.

A section of the excavation path, with a length of 2,930 meters, reaches a maximum underwater depth of 115 meters with a maximum water pressure of up to 1.06 MPa, setting a record for the deepest underwater railway tunnel in China.

According to a WeChat post, the Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway is a crucial component of the national high-speed rail network along the coast and a key infrastructure project within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Belt and Road Initiative.

As of Tuesday, two-thirds of the overall construction of the Pearl River Tunnel had been completed.