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

Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U

[FooAtWFU]

Will that enable truck traffic all the way to say, LA? 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.... If the Russkies wanted to invade Alaska, what good would a tunnel do? Send through the ground troops? I'm sure that would work reeeeeealy well, especially after a few strategic collapses...

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

Never Going to Happen

[Shihar]

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.

Re:Never Going to Happen

[interiot]

The tunnel wouldn't really be planned to transport many people. Currently, even using just the standard airplane/ferry options, very few passengers take the route that the tunnel is planned for. [1] Presumably, the tunnel (or bridge) would be used primarily for transporting oil/gas/electricity (and possibly some containerized transport as well?).

Re:Never Going to Happen

[manekineko2]

I love the attitude common on Slashdot where posters come up with extremely obvious criticisms to new ideas posted on Slashdot, and then in an extremely conclusory manner dismiss the entire idea/project as stupid or silly. It's as if they assume that their intellect is so mighty, that surely whatever trivial criticisms they have to make have never been thought of by high ranking professionals whose job is to think about the project.

10-12 billion?

[CyberSnyder]

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?

Re:Look at a map for your answer.

[v1]

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?)