Norway to spend $315M on world's first ship tunnel.
Norway has unveiled plans to build the world's first ship tunnel by smashing through a solid rock peninsula.
The mile-long, 118-feet-wide tunnel will pass through the narrowest part of the Stad peninsula in western Norway, allowing freight and passenger ships to bypass the stormy, exposed Stadhavet Sea and avoid a highly treacherous part of the Scandinavian nation's coastline.
The team anticipates it will take three to four years to build the tunnel and cost an estimated $315 million. To create it engineers will have to blast out a huge eight million tonnes of rock.
Passages and canals for boats have been built elsewhere in the world, but this will be the first tunnel allowing enormous cruise and freight ships that weigh up to 16,000 tonnes to pass through solid rock.