It is limited viewing, requires a reservation & the slots run out practically in seconds. Tough for us residents to get it as well. My wife could snag it in her third try, as a late birthday trip last year.
It is gargantuan & having massive holding capacity. To give semblance with something familiar, it was like standing in NY Grand Central station, except it was felt bigger, empty, damp & illuminated by floodlights from all sides. It is probably one and half football fields in length & scales high as much as a five storied building. Uploaded three pics to show the scale of this megalith. (The base of the pillars here are taller than average height of person to give a rough scale. The stairs come down from the ground level)
In addition to this underground chamber, there are two massive pumps on either sides, which divert the water from whichever river is surging to the other (Arakawa & Edogawa possibly). The chamber is the buffer zone between the rivers, not a storage tank ultimately. I was told by the civil engineer of this plant they could pump out as much as a jumbo jet's volume per minute in its storm surge channel/drain to manage flooding. You can walk up to the turbine room at the end of this room, and see its massive blades at an arm length. All with earthquake protection in place as well. Honestly mind-blowing piece of engineering.
I've also visited. It was a hot day when I went. As we descended, the coolness felt amazing, but there was this misty fog inside. Mixed with the dark dampness, I felt like I walked in to a Andrei Tarkovsky scene.
The Fens in East Anglia in the UK has a lot of interesting pumping tech. The latest can do 100m3/s (https://www.edie.net/st-germans-pumping-station-keeps-fens-f...). If all the pumps failed there would be hundreds of km2 underwater within days or weeks
> In addition to this underground chamber, there are two massive pumps on either sides, which divert the water from whichever river is surging to the other (Arakawa & Edogawa possibly).
You probably mean pumping stations right? Usually single pumps don’t have that kind of flow rate. Just a nit pick though, your comment was really interesting!
Yeah throughout the entire facility (several large chambers with large tunnels between them) there's something like eighty 10MW pumps to move water out of the chambers into the river.
If you hear that, it’s too late for you, I’m afraid.
It’s time to go when your guide says: “It’s inexcusable and I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, but the control room has informed me that we should make our way towards the emergency exit five minutes to the south west of the left of the 7-11. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.”
My first thought was Akira, but it's almost the same thing; there are some parts of Half Life which are lifted almost directly from Akira, like the first diagonal elevator that headcrabs slide down.
Cisterns aren’t really the same thing; cisterns store drinking water for long term whereas these caverns are only supposed to hold water until the treatment plant can handle it.
It's not the same, but this is similar to Chicago's Deep Tunnel Project. There's a lot of fascinating reading on the project. If you're in the area, you can even get a tour of one of the stations:
In a similar vein is the surge shaft being built as part of the Snowy 2.0 scheme in Australia. 28 metres diameter and 263 metres deep. It absorbs the momentum of the surge of water when the downstream power station closes its valves.
> In a similar vein is the surge shaft being built as part of the Snowy 2.0 scheme in Australia. [...] It absorbs the momentum of the surge of water when the downstream power station closes its valves.
It has a fantastic reverb too! Would love to take a drum kit down there... and a speaker to play a sweep & capture an IR. Tried using handclaps when I visited.
> “It’s like a science-fiction kind of facility,” says JICA’s Inaoka, whose job involves collaborating with experts from developing countries to share Japan’s expertise.
My first thought upon seeing the photos was that this was the inspiration for many of the indoor levels in the original Half-Life. All that's missing are the headcrabs.
22 meters underground, built in 1950s, Tokyo, 5-7% of GDP - yeah the gigantic underground vaults serve as flood protection, to those who have a good understanding of Japanese history, it's understandable to believe these were rather primarily built as bomb and nuclear shelters.
It would easy to tell: (unless they were occupied by only a handful of people) they would be useless as fallout shelters without a lot of ventilation, and you can't rely on the wind: you'd need big fans and ducts, and the fans would need to keep running after most of the electricity-generating capacity available in Tokyo is destroyed, i.e., this ventilation system would need its own hardened electricity supply.
Colour it green and you have a Mirrors Edge Level - this really looks like the underground part in the first game. The form of the stele as an example.
I am sure other cities have it as well, but it really looks close to the level.
The scale of this facility is deceptive in the video. If you pay attention about halfway through, a man walks through. His head only comes up almost to the top of the taper on the footings.
they should have called it parliament, not cathedral. BBC don't know the meaning of the word cathedral, or was this intentional to trigger some kind of reaction from religious groups.
It is limited viewing, requires a reservation & the slots run out practically in seconds. Tough for us residents to get it as well. My wife could snag it in her third try, as a late birthday trip last year.
It is gargantuan & having massive holding capacity. To give semblance with something familiar, it was like standing in NY Grand Central station, except it was felt bigger, empty, damp & illuminated by floodlights from all sides. It is probably one and half football fields in length & scales high as much as a five storied building. Uploaded three pics to show the scale of this megalith. (The base of the pillars here are taller than average height of person to give a rough scale. The stairs come down from the ground level)
https://i.imgur.com/Jtcy0Ct.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/8Q08eKS.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/y75sfGP.jpeg
In addition to this underground chamber, there are two massive pumps on either sides, which divert the water from whichever river is surging to the other (Arakawa & Edogawa possibly). The chamber is the buffer zone between the rivers, not a storage tank ultimately. I was told by the civil engineer of this plant they could pump out as much as a jumbo jet's volume per minute in its storm surge channel/drain to manage flooding. You can walk up to the turbine room at the end of this room, and see its massive blades at an arm length. All with earthquake protection in place as well. Honestly mind-blowing piece of engineering.