On March 18, the "Shenshan No. 1" open-type TBM (tunnel boring machine) for the Beikeng Reservoir Project undertaken by Sinohydro Bureau 7 Co., Ltd. was successfully launched, marking that the water resource guarantee project construction of the Shenshan Special Cooperation Zone has officially entered a new stage of tunnel boring.

At 10:30, as the launch command was issued, the cutterhead of this "underground dragon" slowly rotated and advanced toward the branch tunnel portal of the water conveyance tunnel of the Beikeng Reservoir Project, beginning a 6-kilometer boring task.

With a total length of 105 meters and a total weight of about 280 tons, "Shenshan No. 1" is the first open-type TBM launched in the Shenshan Special Cooperation Zone. It has advantages such as high safety, little impact on the surrounding ecology, and high boring efficiency, and can meet the challenges of the Beikeng Project's water conveyance tunnel crossing complex geological units such as fault zones and ultra-hard rock, ensuring efficient and safe tunnel boring.

The Beikeng Reservoir and its supporting water conveyance project is one of the three storage reservoirs in the "one diversion, three storage, two plants" water source planning layout of the Shenshan Special Cooperation Zone, and is a key water conservancy project of Guangdong Province. After the project is completed, the average annual urban water supply over multiple years can reach 19.58 million cubic meters, with an irrigation water volume of 1.75 million cubic meters and an irrigation area of 3,800 mu. It will not only effectively solve the engineering-related water shortage problem in the Shenshan Cooperation Zone and greatly alleviate the contradiction between regional water supply and demand, injecting strong momentum into economic take-off, but also take into account irrigation functions, guarantee irrigation water for cultivated land, promote increased agricultural production and income, and advance rural revitalization.