The World's Longest Tunnel 563
fusconed writes "Bloomberg reports that the Russian government is proposing to build an underground tunnel between Russia and Alaska for transporting goods, electricity and natural resources. The tunnel would be twice as long as that between the UK and France. The $10 — $12b cost is not something to be overlooked, but Russia claims the benefits would pay it off in 20 years. It would take 10 to 15 years to build, but being an Alaskan, it sounds good to me!"
Has to be said (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Has to be said (Score:5, Funny)
Below the ICE sounds good but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at a map for your answer. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's one, in case you had trouble finding one for yourself: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0
The Bering Strait is clearly well north of the Ring of Fire faultlines. Thus the tectonic impact will be minimal.
Furthermore, you don't throw together a $12 billion proposal and not take into account such things. Anything you can think of regarding this project has likely been thought of already by the planners. If crustal movement was to have a serious impact, we would not be hearing about this proposal, because it would have been scrapped long ago.
Re:Look at a map for your answer. (Score:4, Insightful)
Often, its the simplest/obvious details that come back to bite you in the ass, you know, the ones that someone should have thought of, that everyone ignored or passed off or simply dident think of, and all because it was so obvious that it wasent worth their time at the moment, someone else surely already thought of it, or simply passed off.
Re:Look at a map for your answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
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That reminds me that the "Chunnel" was completed by starting on both ends and meeting in the middle, and IIRC, when they met, after several miles of digging in both directions, they were off by about a foot in on
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That IS quite remarkable. And it reminds me of a similar project on the island of Samos in the 6th century BC. They dug an aqueduct through a mountain over a km long. They dug it from both ends, though from what I read of it, n
Re:Look at a map for your answer. (Score:5, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eupalinian_aqueduct [wikipedia.org]
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Engineers aren't infallible. I work with a bunch of them and one in particular was, I'm sure, put on this earth to test my patience. She doesn't build tunnels... she makes me want to go live in an abandoned one.
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The linked article doesn't mention how they knew how to make sure the tunnels even started out at the right angles and positions in the mountain so that they would indeed meet in the middle. And due to conditions of the rock, they co
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Umm.. just to nitpick (Score:3, Informative)
"The term imperial should not be applied to English units that were outlawed in Weights and Measures Act of 1824 or earlier, or which had fallen out of use by that time, nor to post-imperial inventions such as the slug or poundal."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units [wikipedia.org]
Re:Look at a map for your answer. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Look at a map for your answer. (Score:5, Informative)
The southern coast of the Aluetians are on the so-called "ring of fire" which is prone to earthquakes, whereas the Bearing Strait is quite far away. The analogy would be a building in Colorado scuttled by a large California earthquake. It is about the same distance from San Fransisco to Denver (930 miles, or so) as it is from PWS to the likely site of the tunnel.
Stew
Re:Look at a map for your answer. (Score:5, Informative)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8
The tunnel will be entirely within the north american plate. Someone below mentioned connecting vancouver island and the mainland. There's a reason why there isn't an existing physical connection between the island and the mainland, and neither money nor politics has anything to do with it. Vancouver Island, I believe, sits on the pacific plate, while as we all know, mainland is on the north american plate. Now that project would be quite infeasible, and dangerous to boot.
Better reasons for why no Vancouver Island tunnel (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at this document from the government of British Columbia [gov.bc.ca]. It is a fairly extensive article discussing the various considerations for building fixed links (tunnels, bridges, etc.) across large bodies of water. In this case it talks specifically about a link between the British Columbia mainland (at Vancouver) and Vancouver Island, but the considerations it mentions are quite valid most places people want to create these kinds of links. A good read considering the OP.
A few points from the article on why a fixed link across the Straight of Georgia is not likely to happen any time soon:I think someone who wrote that article did get the wind conditions wrong. I think it is fair to say that they can get wind speeds up to 115 kph or higher during a storm, as we saw this last winter. However, that is not an average wind speed, as I can attest to from trips I have made across the straight myself. :-) Wind speeds are no more different normally than say the English Channel.
For a tunnel, they would need to go down more than 815 metres (2,675 feet) to stay in stable rock (that is when it didn't shake from an earthquake or tremor). There is some speculation that if a major earthquake happened that huge underwater landslides from the sand banks on the south side of Vancouver (around where the south arm of the Frazer River exits into the straight) could cause a tsunami.
Re:Look at a map for your answer. (Score:4, Interesting)
I drove over a bridge in Alaska once that had a little placard beside it detailing its unusual design. One end was firmly anchored onto one plate, the other end was mostly cantilevered from that end. Where it connected to the other plate (the other end of the bridge) there was an expansion joint - I think it was designed to withstand 10 or 12 feet of movement without failing. Fun stuff, but I'm happy to live in a more geologically stable locale.
Re:Below the ICE sounds good but... (Score:5, Insightful)
That tunnel will be the continuation of the "Road of Tears" on the Russian side. This is the Road from Magadan to Kolima and all the way to the Chukotka peninsula which was used to ship convicts to Gulag. If you want to see the state of this road get the documentary Ewan McGregor (of S*** Wars 1,2,3 fame) and his friend did on their BMW bike round the world trip (or the relevant magazine issues with pictures from there). It has been disused since the camps closed for 40+ years now. Most bridges have fallen into the rivers, the tarmac is gone and the road is just a jumble of concrete slabs slowly moved around by the permafrost thawing induced by them.
It will take twice as much money to fix that mess compared to the tunnel with minimal economical benefit. The potential goods flow is very low in the first place. You are shipping from one wilderness to another. How much can that be? In addition to that the total cost of goods shipping will end up being more than offloading them onto ships in Vladivostok and shipping across the Pacific. 6-7000 miles by train with very hight track maintenance expenses (I am not going to even mention trucks, it is silly) is way more than offloading the same goods on a big container ship and shipping across 3-4000 miles of sea.
Same for electricity - shipping electricity 4000+ miles is not cost effective. Gas and Oil probably may have some economical effect, but they do not need a tunnel. There is plenty of experience in running pipelines on the seabed by now. Including by Russians under the Black Sea.
Overall, the project is "hidrostroy" type madness. For the reference - hidrostroy was an organisation in the old USSR which built all the water dams and over the years it become a monstrousity of enormous proportions. It had the power to lobby for enormous insane projects which in turn allowed it to grow more and once again to lobby and so on. The last madness just before the fall was lobbying to divert the river flow of the major siberian rivers 2000 miles south to the Aral sea (which was destroyed by previous hidrostroy projects).
Road of Bones (Score:4, Informative)
A more current link (Score:3)
Summary: If the channel tunnel went bankrupt, how can you spend $13 billion on a Mediterranian tunnel and expect it to pay for itself?
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If the government had paid for the project itself, then it would have been classed a huge success
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Assuming that the interest on the loan is not significantly above the market rate -- with a government project it has to be asked -- then a project that fails to cover the interest on its loan is still a net loss, even if its income exceeds the non-interest expenses. Interest represents and accounts for the fact that people prefer investments with a soone
Re:A more current link (Score:5, Funny)
Gravity train? (Score:2)
tastes like bacon (Score:5, Insightful)
oink oink oink oink is that the smell of PORK? :)
But really, aside from that, is the infrastructure in Alaska and Canada and eastern Russia up there really of the sort that could take advantage of a big project like this? It's all well and good to ship cargo and electricity and such through a tunnel, but without having a way to get it to / take it away from the tunnel, I'd be skeptical of the utility.
And of the line losses. That's a thought. Which is greater- the line losses of electricity going from Russia to here, or the cost to ship coal from an equivalent power plant in Russia and in the United States?
Re:tastes like bacon (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I believe the costs to build high-voltage lines or whatever is needed to get the electricity from the tunnel to a useful area would be dwarfed by the cost of the tunnel itself, which they've clearly already taken into account.
each b2 stealth costs 2 billion. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would imagine they'd run truck carriers through as well though just like they do through the chunnel. It might raise some sticky poloution issues though having trucks with tanks full of russian deisel driving into north american cities.
64 miles (Score:3, Interesting)
That's nice but... (Score:3, Informative)
From a quick Google Maps search, they have to link Fairbanks on the U.S. side (600 miles off)
and Magadan on the Russian side (1200 miles). The terrain between is a nasty mix of marsh,
mountains, and permafrost too.
Still, it'd be way cool to be able to road-trip to Europe!
Cheaper Chunnel? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm no expert on inflation and exchange rates, but by estimating this tunnel at $10-$12 billion aren't they saying that a tunnel that is twice as long as the Channel Tunnel will actually cost less to build? Is there any reason to believe this will actually be so?
Re:Cheaper Chunnel? (Score:4, Funny)
If you believe that
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The Big Dig was done in a highly populated area in some pretty nasty ground... I don't see how it relates in anyway.
The Chunnel is had some severe issues with the quality of the ground they were digging through, it was basically a sponge in many areas. The area under the Bering Sea may be more solid which not only make it a shit load cheaper but faster
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Such price problems are easily fixed (Score:3, Funny)
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10B GBP = $20B . You're not keeping up with the news [bbc.co.uk].
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Russia and Alaska on the other hand could SERIOUSLY benefit from this tunnel though. Russian coal, gold, oil, natural gas, caviar, vodka
Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
It's a plan to take over all of North America (Score:5, Funny)
Risky Business (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Risky Business (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Risky Business (Score:4, Funny)
Never Going to Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The link between France and England makes sense. The tunnel spits people out very close to densely populated zones and provides access to the rest of Europe with a few hours (or less) of train rides. The link between Russia and the US would spit people and goods out as far as you can possibly get them from populated zones. The cultural benefits would be almost nil as it makes no sense to fly a few hours from the lower 48 states, land in Alaska, then take a train ride to the middle of nowhere Russia. You might as well just fly the whole way and go somewhere more interesting then frozen wastelands. If you want to ship goods to the US or Russia, you are better off just to load up a boat.
The whole idea is stupid.
Re:Never Going to Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Never Going to Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
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You'd be surprised. For instance, The Channel tunnel doesn't make money [bbc.co.uk].
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If they're engineers at least some of the time, then it doesn't really matter if they're politicians for the rest of the time.
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Personally, I'd rather fund this than the Iraq occupation, even if it is pork!
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m-w.com
One entry found for innumerable.
Main Entry: innumerable
Pronunciation: i-'nüm-r&-b&l, -'nyüm-; -'n(y)ü-m&-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin innumerabilis, from in- + numerabilis numerable
: too many to be numbered : COUNTLESS; also : very many
Try again.
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As someone who's tried to coordinate the delivery of products from multiple factories in Asia to stores in the US so they all arrive on the same day, I'll disagree...
But, if you can chop 10 days off my transit time while keeping the costs the same, I'll be very happy!
And really, they key thing is that the actual transit time matches the scheduled transit time. Yes, in that case, I don't mind how long it tak
How much is it worth it to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would take 10 to 15 years to build, but being an Alaskan, it sounds good to me!"
What if that means you have to give up almost half your $1,000 yearly oil royalty check for ten to fifteen years ? Because that's about what it would cost, assuming Alaska pays half and Russia pays half.
Re:How much is it worth it to you? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would take 10 to 15 years to build, but being an Alaskan, it sounds good to me!"
What if that means you have to give up almost half your $1,000 yearly oil royalty check for ten to fifteen years ? Because that's about what it would cost, assuming Alaska pays half and Russia pays half.
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If they've got it so good, why don't you move to Alaska and cash in?
Hmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess this brings a whole new meaning to "a series of tubes"!
Thanks,
Mike
Bridge to nowhere? (Score:5, Funny)
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Not underground, but undersea (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not underground, but undersea (Score:4, Informative)
10-12 billion? (Score:5, Insightful)
passenger service (Score:4, Interesting)
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Senator Stevens (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure it sounds good to your senior US Senator as well.
There may well be value in a gas/oil pipeline from Siberia, but someone should check the numbers very carefully. Other than gas and oil, trade with Russia just isn't going to be that important. Even if non-energy trade with Russia does grow, it will still probably be cheaper to send cargo ships to Oakland or Seattle.
Rail connection to the Lower 48? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're not familiar with the geography of Western Canada, it's worth taking a peek at your favorite mapping site... Make sure you look at something like Hybrid view on Google Maps, so you get a sense of the topography....
Unless there's already a rail connection from the proposed Alaskan terminal through Canada, I don't see this as being particularly economically feasible. Certainly the US should insist that Canada kick in a contribution.
But if this does come about, I hope they'll run passenger trains along that route, it would be a spectacular train ride!
dave (occasional railfan)
p.s. Speaking of Canada, how about the prospects for a tunnel from the Lower Mainland to Vancouver Island? My guess is that the island residents will never go for it, all that traffic would ruin their spectacular corner of the world...
submitter's comment (Score:3, Insightful)
"being an Alaskan, it sounds good to me!"
Well of course it does. Alaska has long received excessive amounts of Federal spending. This would just be yet another large government handout that would have almost no benefits.
road trip! (Score:5, Funny)
"oh look a sign... next gas station, 1200 km"
"daddy i got to goes to the bathroom"
"not now honey, your pee will freeze to your dick or the polar bears might get you"
"mommy, jessica is drooling on me!"
"tell jessica we'll leave her at genghis khan's firecracker shack when we get to ulan bator if she doesn't knock it off"
"honey, all this mcdonald's drive thru serves is skinned uncooked dog"
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>
> "not now honey, your pee will freeze to your dick or the polar bears might get you"
you call your son 'honey'???
can you spell 'councelling'?
or is your son a lady-boy?
Re:road trip! (Score:5, Funny)
NYC Tunnel (Score:4, Informative)
So we've been trying to build the Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel [wikipedia.org] from Jersey City to Brooklyn. It's supposed to cost only $2-3B, which is only <5% the NYC annual budget.
But Mayor Bloomberg, like any NYC mayor, is more interested in real estate developers than in the overall economy of NYC, so he opposes it. But it's probably the best tunnel project being considered in the US. It would further integrate the US with itself, making us more productive, not further subsidize the Alaskan oil corporations and make us more dependent on the Russian mafia oil industry.
Bering Tunnel: Old News (Score:3, Informative)
This idea has been afloat (so to speak) for decades.
It's a pretty good idea, as long as you can keep Al Qaeda out of it. I guess you just keep anyone who looks, you know, Arab or Persian, or generally suspicious out.
A rail connection from Alaska to the lower 48 would be "interesting" and more of a challenge than the tunnel itself because of the amount of permafrost bog in the way. I've driven the Alaska Highway and Cassiar three times and can tell you all about permafrost and mosquitoes. However, a land route to Nome, a road anyway, has been planned for some time, and will probably be built one of these days. Currently the only way to reach Nome overland is via snow machine (or dogsled) during the winter. Actually there are a number of Alaskan villages of up to a thousand people that can't be reached overland during the summer.
There is a well-used railway link from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Otherwise, the rail infrastructure in Alaska, YT, and northern BC, is mostly nonexistent. I think around 1000 miles of rail would have to be built from Fairbanks to Dease Lake BC.
The transportation infrastructure in Siberia is terrible and a rail link, to anywhere, would be immensely useful. The best time of year to travel there is the winter, when the roads are frozen and smooth, and ice roads can be built over water - just as in parts of Alaska and northern Canada. In warmer weather, the roads are mud. Meanwhile, northeast Asia has immense natural resources just waiting.
I'd like to see it built in my lifetime.
A cheaper way to do it (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piecrete [wikipedia.org]
Its great stuff. Its cheap. And the geographic location is perfect for it.
(Hell, I've been thinking about Piecrete ever since I was a kid and I just
want someone to do SOMETHING with it)
Sure beats spending $20 Billion anyway.
Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U (Score:5, Insightful)
They have Boats for that sort of thing; it'd be a lot more practical.
Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061387/ [imdb.com]
Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U (Score:4, Funny)
Reminds me of conversations I had with a mate in the navy:
"So, how's life on the boat?"
"It's a ship dammit - a SHIP!!"
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Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is we just can't get planning permission to build straight tracks. Locals object (because of noise), hippies object (to cutting down trees), environmentalists object (on principal) and so forth. By the time you incorporate the costs of fighting through all the planning, public enquiries, protestors, etc, building a high speed train link anywhere in the UK is un-economic.
Chunnel trains travel at high speed through France because they built a new, straight, track for them - when they get to the UK they have to slow to about 50% because they're running on old, curvy, tracks.
In the UK it's a real problem in all sorts of ways not just for trains. For example, everybody with half a brain knows that Heathrow Airport must have another runway. It's the only even nearly reasonable solution to current air traffic problems but the locals, hippies, enviros, etc, are fighting tooth and nail, it will take years to force it through despite the fact it's an absolute imperative and needs to be done yesterday.
Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U (Score:5, Funny)
ha-ha! While you weren't looking I just took Greenland!
Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U (Score:5, Informative)
I can only assume you think other people are that stupid because you are that stupid. If you'd read TFA you'd have seen that they have in fact considered transport links on the North American continent. It doesn't mention roads, only rail, but trucks are a pretty crappy way to move stuff thousands of miles anyway.
I'm surprised they are considering a highway in the tunnel itself. Putting vehicles on trains is faster and safer and ventilating a 65km tunnel full of vehicles would be a huge task, even compared to the scale of the project.
Not truck traffic, but rail traffic, sure... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think that you'd really want to bother with a road in the tunnel. Like the Chunnel, you'd probably use trains. They're more efficient, and you don't have to worry about exhaust gases building up in the tunnel (they're electric), plus they just make a lot more sense for moving bulk goods over long distances.
The Russians already have a well-developed rail infrastructure -- that's if they haven't torn it up for scrap metal lately -- and the Trans-Siberia Railway is all double-track and electrified (at no small expense, but hey, when you have a lot of peasants or comrades to employ, who cares?), so it would be dumb to transfer it all to trucks.
You can't run the same cars from Russia to the U.S., unfortunately they're like the only place in the world that doesn't use Standard Gauge tracks and rolling stock (they use 5-foot gauge instead of the standard 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches; oddly the latter actually works out more nicely in cm than the former), but if you did everything in shipping containers it wouldn't be that hard to build a yard somewhere and just shift them across to new cars. Probably do it on the Russian side since you'd want to save the space in the tunnels and go with the narrower gauge.
Russia, particularly Siberia, has a lot of natural resources. Timber, coal, mineral ores, and probably oil
Variable-wheelbase railcars (Score:5, Insightful)
The tunnel would make for some enticing possibilities. Imagine a rail tanker full of Stolichnaya leaving Moscow and arriving in Boston two weeks later, totally free of stevedores' handling fees. Mmmm, vodka...
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Loading gauge is different from rail gauge (the distance between the rails)...it refers to the size of the rolling stock that can be run on the line, dictated by the proximity of structures to the line itself. It's the reason why North American trains couldn't run on British railroads even though the track gauge is the same.
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Stew
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THERE'S A PASSENGER TRAIN W/ VARIABLE GAUGE (Score:3, Insightful)
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A tunnel might prove more expensive than a bridge, but given the extremel
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Re:"goods, electricity and natural resources..." (Score:5, Funny)
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It wasn't pretty. The cause was a combination of a mismatch of truck widths and lane widths, the lack of an escape lane, tailgating trucks and a driver with a panic attack. If the tunnel is properly designed, it's workable. If costs drive down the ultimate width relative to the planned capacity, you will have deaths. I wish, I really wish hard, that
Re:Why not a bridge? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Madness (Score:4, Insightful)
That is only true if USA does not buy anything at all from China and Korea and Japan. But it does.
As many posters indicated, this tunnel can guarantee transportation of goods using tidal energy, in other words - even when fuel oil for ships is in short supply or becomes just too expensive. Most of the railways in the Far East already have electric power, and the new tracks for the tunnel will definitely have electric power as well. This would allow you to transport anything directly from China through Transsib [wikipedia.org] and the connecting railways to Alaska, bypassing the ocean and the shipping completely.
In other words, the Peak Oil concept may be believed or disbelieved by populace, and nobody cares what you or I think about it. However large states must pay attention to the possibility, even if it is only a conjecture. The tunnel between continents would greatly add to national security of both USA and Russia - in the real sense of national security, such as the guaranteed ability to trade for centuries ahead.