The World's Longest Tunnel

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!"

Comments

Cheaper Chunnel?

[ObligatoryUserName]

According to Wikipedia, in 1990, when the Channel Tunnel was completed its cost was estimated as 10 billion GBP.

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?

[Lifyre]

Ok, first let me say that I think this number is probably a little small BUT the two big projects people are throwing around are the Big Dig and the Chunnel.

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 and easier. Also this tunnel is primarily a goods by truck tunnel. The Chunnel is for trains, goods, and automobile traffic. That means the Chunnel has more tunnels, more complications, and more safety issues to deal with.

People are talking about electricity and oil but there are many other goods that would profit as well, such as crab, timber, and mail order brides.

Interesting

[PingXao]

Looks like it's only about 60 miles with a nice little island halfway in between. It'll be interesting to see if this proposal goes anywhere. Any anticipated economic potential will have to be weighed against the operational costs, however, which will surely entail full-time security checkpoints at both ends and in the middle to thwart any bad guys looking to blow it up. Those costs can't be insignificant.

Not underground, but undersea

[GayBliss]

The summary says underground tunnel, but it's actually an undersea tunnel and is likely above ground. These types of things typically are. The sections are dropped into the sea and connected together on the sea floor. They are not dug underground.

Re:Not underground, but undersea

[Elder Entropist]

The one under the English Channel is underground, and it's probably the most comparable to this one.

Re:Why not a bridge?

[MeanMF]

Well, since you're already on Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait_bridge

Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U

[mollymoo]

Last I heard, the coast was the only way and it didnt go ALL the way for roads. So Russia just gets to trade with Alaska, not the entire North American continent.

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.

Look at a map for your answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

To answer you question, all that you need to do is to look at a map of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Here's one, in case you had trouble finding one for yourself: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09 /Pacific_Ring_of_Fire.png

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

When people talk about the infallibility of engineers, I think of Tacoma.

Re:Look at a map for your answer.

[DarkDaimon]

Actually, there is are earthquakes in Alaska. In fact, three of the the top 10 most powerful quakes in the world were located in Alaska. Just take a look here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/10_large st_world.php

Re:Look at a map for your answer.

[steelfood]

Better yet:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a /Plates_tect2_en.svg

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.

Re:Look at a map for your answer.

[StewedSquirrel]

Actually, Prince William Sound is almost 1000 miles from the Bearing Strait and even such a large earthquate would require sensitive seismographs to measure that far away.

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

Not truck traffic, but rail traffic, sure...

[Kadin2048]

Will that enable truck traffic all the way to say, LA?

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 ... lots of stuff that's good to ship in bulk via pipelines or via heavy rail.

Rail connection to the Lower 48?

[david.emery]

OK, so we get a tunnel to somewhere on the west coast of Alaska.... Then what? To the best of my recollection, there are no rail lines connecting Alaska with the Lower 48. So you're probably talking about a rail line paralleling the Alaska highway (built during WWII, when cost was no object...) to Prince Rupert, BC, and then probably to Edmonton, AB. So the people who would make out like bandits on this would be the Canadian railroads, all that bridge traffic to the United States.

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...

NYC Tunnel

[Doc Ruby]

NYC is on the East side of the Hudson River (except for Staten Island, but that's really Jersey). As is Long Island and New England. The Hudson runs all the way up to near Canada. So that hugely populous part of the country (over 30M people) is divided from the rest of the states. The closest railroad bridge to NYC is over 100 miles North of the City. We've got a couple of tunnels and a couple of bridges for trucks, though our ports have been reduced to a token amount of transfer.

So we've been trying to build the Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel 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.

Better reasons for why no Vancouver Island tunnel

[theshowmecanuck]

Take a look at this document from the government of British Columbia. 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:

In addition to the possibility of earthquakes, there are other engineering challenges to any fixed link across Georgia Strait. These include:

• length of a crossing could be up to 26 kilometres;
• water depths are up to 365 metres (1,197.5 feet);
• deep, soft sediments of up to 450 metres (1,476.4) on the ocean bed;
• potential marine slope instabilities along the eastern side of the Strait could result in future underwater landslides;
• extreme wave conditions (4to 7 metre waves, with 6 metre tides and 2 knot current);
• wind conditions (115 kilometres per hour on average with gusts to 180 kilometres per hour)
• passage of major ships through the area; and
• the need to protect a crossing structure against ship impact (a floating bridge could not withstand the impact of a tanker vessel).

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.

Road of Bones

[MrAngryForNoReason]

I think you are referring to the Road of Bones. The Road of Tears is an album by the Battlefield Band..