There are a number of reasons you may want to turn to tunnel boring methods rather than drilling and blasting. However, there are key safety issues at the heart of the debate. Here are four safety advantages you get when you opt for tunneling.
1. No Explosives on Site
The most obvious safety advantage between tunneling and drilling and blasting is that you don't have to keep explosives on site. You don't have to deal with ordering or storing these risky products, and you also don't have to hire an expert to create explosives out of raw materials on your site. Instead, you just need to deal with the tunneling and boring equipment.
2. No Flying Rocks
Using explosives to blast rocks and soil out of your way so you can access ore deposits can result in a lot of rocks being thrown into the air. In most cases, it's easy to keep a safe distance, but there's always a risk that an errant rock will fly out unexpectedly. That could injure you or your employees and add unplanned costs or liability issues to your project.
With tunnel boring, the boring machinery creates a small tunnel for you to access the ore deposits. The material is just pushed through the tunnel. You have to dispose of it, but you never have to worry about it hitting one of your crew members or your machinery.
3. Fewer Vibrations
The process of blasting shakes the ground. Those vibrations can unsettle machinery, throw humans off balance or cause potential damage to nearby structures. In most cases, you can mitigate all those risks by choosing tunnel boring instead. This discreet process gets into the ground without disturbing the nearby area as much.
4. Reduced Risk of Collapse
If you are doing drilling and blasting and you have people in the mines doing the hard work, those people are at a constant risk of the mine shaft collapsing on top of them. Even if you take all kinds of precautions to prevent that from happening, unexpected events ranging from heavy machinery accidentally driving over the shaft to earthquakes, can lead to a collapse.
When you opt for tunnel boring, you don't send people into the mines. As a result, there is no risk of collapses on top of them.
Want to learn more about boring, the benefits and how it may be safer than blasting and mining? Then, contact a boring expert today.
