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Holes: Is Underground Construction the Answer to Security Problems?

Some vexing security and safety challenges have a simple solution: Move the buildings underground.

Finally, underground siting responds directly to community concerns about security and safety: Nobody is going to be on your back about a facility that is 200 feet underground. There will be no fights about historically protected buildings or sun rights. Put a structure under the surface and the neighbors will forget about it, surely the happiest possible outcome from a security point of view. "If you have a security problem, you need a reason not to go underground," is how Brierley sees it.

The military has understood this for some time, as shown by the construction of the various underground cities intended to protect the entitled from nuclear war. (The first of these, Raven Rock, was built in the 1950s. Among other amenities it had cars, roads, designated smoking areas and a chapel.) Yet despite their example, the underground option is surprisingly absent from public discussion. How is it that the anxiety over the security and safety issues raised by nuclear power plants so seldom expresses itself as a demand that they be built underground? That the discussion over keeping high-speed trains safe from vandals and worse does not end with a consensus to put trains in tunnels (where they would not only be safe but could run a great deal faster)? Why do the authorities not insist that every phase of liquid natural gas management, right from the moment it leaves the tanker, take place under the earth's surface?

The reflexive answer would be cost, and while there is something to that, people are often willing to pay for public safety. Besides, the price per cubic foot of underground space is not all that far from the range of contemporary construction costs. In the mid-'90s an 11.5 kilometer road tunnel was built in Norway (between Flam and Gudvangen) for about $17 a real estate foot, or REF (a REF equals 10 cubic feet). That number is on the low side; it reflects the efficiency that can be built up by the same team doing the same thing under the same conditions for a long time. Not all underground projects have those advantages. More representatively, a metro extension dug in Madrid, Spain, during the late '90s came in at $150/REF (though note that figure is a total cost, including tracks, rolling stock and signaling). On the high end, metroÂpolitan Boston just paid nearly $250/REF to push a water tunnel through exceptionally difficult geology. It's not instantly obvious that these prices should keep underground space out of the conversation, but so long as people think cost is a problem, it is.