The $5.25 billion Panama Canal expansion is an engineering marvel

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Panama Canal Expansion

AP

The Panama Canal, the narrow but essential shipping lane that has for over a century connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is undergoing a $5.25 billion expansion effort.

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The project will allow for ships of 2 1/2 times the size of current restrictions to pass through the canal, loosening a long standing bottleneck on international commerce.

It is an immense effort by any scale, requiring 5 million cubic meters of high-strength concrete - enough to build a highway from New York to St. Louis - and some very impressive engineering.

Unlike the current system, the new locks - scheduled to be completed this weekend - alongside the current, century-old ones, are designed to recycle more than 60% of the water used via a series of basins built alongside the channel.

Mike Newbery, a Vice President at MWH, the water engineering firm responsible for the new design, told Business Insider that the project was filled with some serious challenges.

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"I don't think I've ever come across a design specification where the concrete had to last for a hundred years," Newbery said.

"Maybe nuclear."