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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!"
Will that enable truck traffic all the way to say, LA?
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.
Sounds like a good trick for the ruskies to get us to pay for most of it then threaten to take back Alaska. It's not like Putin is a nice soft fuzzy benevolent character or anything....
And beautiful women, natch. (Eastwards.)
you had me at #!
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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?
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They have Boats for that sort of thing; it'd be a lot more practical.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The whole idea is silly beyond words. WHY on Earth would you connect two nations, both of which have many viable ports, with a massive tunnel to their least populated and most distant parts?
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.
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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Why would you want to go all the way with a road, of all things? Cars are great for undirected travel in dense environments brimming with potential pickup and dropoff points, which is precisely what travel along the coast from Alaska to California is not. For this sort of thing, rail is far more efficient and convenient; plus, you're not stuck behind the wheel of your Hummer the whole ride down. Should the passing scenery out your panoramic windows in your passenger train car get boring, you can take a day off at a train stop to rent a Vespa or a snowmobile, or just go hiking.
Frankly, the last thing America needs this century is to further perpetuate a backwards transportation policy that has bound us to oil, a marriage that hurts us economically, environmentally, and politically the longer we continue. I'm reassured that Canada has shown better judgment, and I trust those floppy-headed lumberjacks won't be laying asphalt all over the coast anytime soon.
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Ditto, Take it from a Bostoner, Big Digs are Bad. Very, Very Bad.
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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 Australia (particularly Melbourne, where I live) had California's road engineering standards. I know we don't have the tax base to afford the infrastructure, but good design isn't about length or number of roads, and we haven't realised that yet. The equation is dollars per death.
Having lived (and driven) in both places for a significant number of years, I can honestly say the roads are the only thing I still miss about California (waves).
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Need i remind everyone about that nasty mars something mission? You know, the one in which a fairly stupid thing, like forgetting to convert to the metric system and back, caused the destruction of a very expensive project. You would think with all that money they would have thought about a silly thing like what the numbers represent as far as metric vs american goes. Anyways, thats the only expensive project i can almost recall off the top of my head, but my point is still valid:
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.
Whether this project makes sense aside, that's what we're blowing in one month in Iraq. Think about all the good infrastructure projects we could build with the money we're wasting on a civil war. Ok, stepping off the political soapbox. Next?
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.
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reminds me of that "100 things I will do if I become an evil overlord". High on the list was something like "I will hire an average 5 yr old as an advisor. Any flaws in my master plan that the child uncovers will be corrected before the plan is implemented." Humorous but insightful. (does that get me a +2?)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
fusconed wrote:
"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.
i think we could easily afford to finance this solo if we were to.. say.. pull back our armies, which are currently sucking up money occupying half the planet?
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I'm sure it's feasible to build a flexible railcar that can ride standard-gauge tracks, then upon exiting the tunnel westbound, expand its wheelbase to match the wider Russian tracks.
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...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
You have a point. On the other hand, most engineering projects are not used while orbiting a planet 100 million miles away. NASA has had some embarrassingly spectacular failures (including some truly tragic ones), but their success engineering accomplishments have been truly amazing and inspiring.
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 one direction and 2 inches in the other (i.e., horizontal vs. vertical). While mankind can't manage more abstract enterprises like software development or governments with more than about a 5% efficiency, we've proved that as a species, we can build some incredible things that work.
Of course, that doesn't rule out that some clown will forget about the International Date Line and the tunnel will accidently get dug to the South Pole. "What?! But you said Drill till Thursday!"
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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 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.
Maybe they don't like to be reminded that their measuring system is an artifact of their former colony status and the rest of the empire abandoned it some time ago.
To answer your question - who gives a flying f*** about the crust movement. This is the last of your problems.
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).
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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 going one way, American electronics, specialized machinery, steel, foodstuffs and cars going the other. Obviously there'd need to be some serious infrastructure improvement around the area but if the plan gets the go-ahead, local officials will find themselves swarmed by construction contractors bidding on the job. (A new trans-Siberian railway? A U.S.-Canada-Alaska highway/railway?)
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 sooner return over ones with a later return (for the same amount of return). If a project fails to break even economically (i.e. turn a profit in accounting terms) after taking the interest into account, that means that the resources could/should have been expended on other, more immediately useful, projects.
No doubt. Many a government project has "been classed a huge success" while remaining a net loss, for lack of proper market-based accounting. The government, in fact, has no way to measure the true cost of its tax-funded projects, since the money it spends it not its own.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat