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

Below the ICE sounds good but...

[jackb_guppy]

What about the crust movement? England and France are fairly stable compared to the "ring of fire".

passenger service

[dheera]

If this is built with a rail line, please run a passenger train now and then... perhaps once or twice a week, connecting to the Trans-Siberian. It will be awesome to know that one day it may be possible to get anywhere in the world by land transportation only. London and Singapore are connected by passenger rail, so why not Alaska, and then the rest of the US and Canada?

Re:How about the route to Canada and Continental U

[trewornan]

I've got to object to that. We British can easily build trains which can manage much more than 125mph.

The problem is we just can't get planning permission to build straight tracks. Locals object (because of noise), hippies object (to cutting down trees), environmentalists object (on principal) and so forth. By the time you incorporate the costs of fighting through all the planning, public enquiries, protestors, etc, building a high speed train link anywhere in the UK is un-economic.

Chunnel trains travel at high speed through France because they built a new, straight, track for them - when they get to the UK they have to slow to about 50% because they're running on old, curvy, tracks.

In the UK it's a real problem in all sorts of ways not just for trains. For example, everybody with half a brain knows that Heathrow Airport must have another runway. It's the only even nearly reasonable solution to current air traffic problems but the locals, hippies, enviros, etc, are fighting tooth and nail, it will take years to force it through despite the fact it's an absolute imperative and needs to be done yesterday.

Re:Look at a map for your answer.

[bill_mcgonigle]

That didn't stop the Japanese; although the Wikipedia article fails to mention it, the Akashi Strait Bridge [wikipedia.org] is not only located in an earthquake-prone area, but actually spans a fault line!

I drove over a bridge in Alaska once that had a little placard beside it detailing its unusual design. One end was firmly anchored onto one plate, the other end was mostly cantilevered from that end. Where it connected to the other plate (the other end of the bridge) there was an expansion joint - I think it was designed to withstand 10 or 12 feet of movement without failing. Fun stuff, but I'm happy to live in a more geologically stable locale.