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Jan 15,2006 - Jan 22,2006 |
15 - A hatred of mines sprouts life-saving technology
Italo-Canadian engineer Richard Lovat invents ground-breaking tunneling machine
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-12-22
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Richard Lovat
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The man coughed painfully one last time, then he laid down his head and died. He was 42. The curse of the mines, called silicosis by physicians, had felled another one.
In spite of being only three at the time, his son Richard understood perfectly that his father would never again play with him. "It was then," Richard Lovat remembers today, "that my hate for mines began. That hate led me to invent a machine that could make underground work safe. That machine has been in existence for the past 40 years, and if you want to be romantic you may say it was an act of love for my father and for all those who lost their lives in mines and tunnels. In any case, it's a proof that one can make business without risking someone else's life."
Richard Lovat is now 71, and chairs Lovat Inc., a company specialized in underground tunneling for subways, aqueducts, roads, mines and anything else man wants to dig up or through the Earth's crust.
Lovat's machine is familiarly called "the mole." It's a huge cylinder, ranging in diameter from two to 20 metres, boring tunnels in the ground and operated by a crew of three, maximum. A sort of submarine, travelling underground instead of underwater. At the same time as the mole digs, a conveyor belt carries debris away and a concrete lining is sprayed on the just-bored gallery. "This way we can dig up to 500 metres per week, i.e. 100 metres per day," explains Richard Lovat.
And how many metres per day can be dug in a traditional system, by men with pickaxes and jackhammers?
"No more than 10 metres. Just to give you an idea, I'll tell you that digging the same amount of soil and rock we daily do with three men, would require no less than 300 miners. But besides this, what about the safety our mole guarantees? In almost 40 years we had no fatalities. So, safety and low management cost, including insurance premiums."
It's no surprise, then, that Richard Lovat's invention should find its place in the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records.
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