The Defence Ministry (Mindef) broke new ground yesterday to become Singapore's first user of underground rock caverns.
Construction has started on an ammunition storage complex that is built deep underground in a disused quarry in Mandai.
Building the depot underground instead will save more than 300 ha of land, or enough to build a new town the size of Pasir Ris, said Mindef.
The ammunition will be stored in caverns to be blasted out of the granite, at depths of about 100 m or more underground.
These caverns will be connected by a series of tunnels that will open out at the quarry site in Mandai.
When the complex is ready in 2003, container trucks carrying the ammunition will be able to drive into the caverns. Each cavern will be large enough to hold about 100 containers.
No cost details were released.
Minister of State for Defence David Lim set off an explosion at the quarry yesterday to mark the start of construction.
He said: "This marks a new approach to land use in Singapore -- the development of underground rock cavern space -- which has potential to provide more space in land-scare Singapore."
Mr Lim noted that the military now uses about 20 per cent of Singapore's land as training space, ammunition storage depots, camps and air and naval bases.
By building multi-storey facilities and camp complexes that share common facilities, Mindef has freed 30 ha of land since 1992.
By 2010, it should have freed about 400 ha in all.
Aside from saving land, he said, the cavern project has put local engineers on the world map for their research into ground shock and the use of water to absorb the energy of an explosion.
"Both these studies presented challenging problems that required large-scale computer simulation and comprehensive field tests. Our scientists and engineers have acquired international stature for their work.
The Straits Times understands that Singapore's research has been incorporated into the new standards for underground ammunition storage which are being drawn up by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Mindef has been studying the possibility of using underground caverns since the early 1990s, alongside the Nanyang Technological University and the Public Works Department, which were exploring civilian use.
The Mindef project team used local expertise from the Lands and Estates Organisation, the Resource Material Organisation, the Resource Planning Office and the Protective Technology Centres.
Foreign know-how was also sought from American, Norwegian and Swedish defence construction and research organisations.
While Mindef has decided to go ahead with its project, The Straits Times believes that a feasibility study on the non-military underground project is still underway.
This is for the Underground Science City project, which involves carving a cavern complex beneath the hills at Kent Ridge for an underground extension of the Science Park.
(taken from The Staits Times, 13/8/99)