Megastructuri: Port of Rotterdam

SINOPSIS

The Port of Rotterdam is a freeway. Every day 450 ships go in and out of here carrying one million tons of cargo worth a staggering one billion dollars. It's not only the biggest port in the world; it's one of the most difficult. Traffic, vicious currents, narrow channels and the biggest super tankers in the world make it a mega operation where the stakes are high, the potential for disaster ever present. To survive, the Port of Rotterdam assembled a fleet of monster tugs and the biggest cranes and unloaders the world has ever seen. The Jumbo Javelin tanker is massive - almost five football fields long, with 700,000 cubic feet of storage space -- the volume of six Olympic swimming pools combined. It's the strongest ship on the high seas and it's unwieldy. To get into Rotterdam it must run the Calandlkanaal, a narrow channel with a brutal undertow. And that's where the "RT Magic" comes in. 5100 horse power packed into just 90 feet of ship, "The Magic" can manhandle a tanker 350 times its own weight. Conventional tugs push or pull. With its revolutionary Voith-Snider drive system, "The Magic" can haul in any direction - even sideways - and turn on a dime. No propeller here. This monster is driven by ten feet high blades that look like an eggbeater giving "The Magic" the stunning ability to stop a super tanker dead, and respond like a dancer to Rotterdam's ripping undertow. "The Magic" needs every advantage it can get. In November 2002 the deadly undertow rammed the 350-foot "Hellenic Star" off course. It plowed into the 550-foot "West Trader," holing it and nearly sinking the Hellenic Star. Damage was in the millions. But "The Magic" isn't alone. High above downtown Rotterdam is one of the most sophisticated navigational computer systems in the world that tracks every ship in the Port to within three feet of its actual position. The World Port Center looks like mission control at NASA, dominated by a two-story high video screen and an army of watchers.