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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!"
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?
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They have Boats for that sort of thing; it'd be a lot more practical.
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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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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?
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?)
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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...
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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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