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?

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: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.

[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...