Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record

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Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 15, 2010 @07:05AM from the what-a-bore dept.

Anonymous Dupaeur writes "Switzerland, co-home of CERN and numerous other world organizations, has come closer to the completion of their recent megaproject: the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man. The project is due to be completed in 2017, and will host 200 to 250 trains a day with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams." After the completion of today's work, the tunnel is now 57 kilometers long, surpassing Japan's 53.9-kilometer Seikan Tunnel. There are a few longer tunnels in existence, such as the 137-kilometer Delaware Aqueduct, but they all move water rather than people.

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Re:I'd love to see by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-15 07:07 · Score: 2, Funny

No drill needed, just a large Rita Hayworth poster and some elbow grease.
Largest made by man by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-15 07:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man.
Is there a larger, naturally occurring train tunnel somewhere?
1. Re:Largest made by man by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-15 07:16 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  There are longer railway tunnels, but they were made by dwarves.
2. Re:Largest made by man by Chris+Burke · 2010-10-15 07:28 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Well, some women made a tunnel 62km in length, so it's good to see the men stepping up.
  
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  The enemies of Democracy are
3. Re:Largest made by man by rossdee · 2010-10-15 08:15 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  We don't know what aliens have built on some other planet in some other solar system...
4. Re:Largest made by man by The+Living+Fractal · 2010-10-15 08:57 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  We also don't know if Man hasn't been abducted to live on a desert planet to mine for the universe's most precious mineral used in starship propulsion... where they could've made an even longer tunnel.
  
  --
  I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Gotthard by MrEricSir · 2010-10-15 07:09 · Score: 4, Funny

Gotthard? Hadron?
Who the hell is coming up with these names? Are they trying to sell Viagra?

--
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
1. Re:Gotthard by slick7 · 2010-10-15 07:35 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Gotthard? Hadron?
  Who the hell is coming up with these names? Are they trying to sell Viagra?
  Zo, you zeem to have zis re-occurring dream about very long tunnelz? HMMM. And what do you zink iss moving in zis tunnelz?
  
  --
  The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Re:I'd love to see by colinRTM · 2010-10-15 07:15 · Score: 2, Informative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine
Holy irrelevant comparison, Batman! by DriedClexler · 2010-10-15 07:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

Mentioning CERN because it's hosted in the same country as the tunnel? Comparing an entire train's kinetic energy to that of a fundmantal particle's kinetic energy? WTF?
Why don't they compare the number of trains going through it per day to the number of possible subatomic particles while they're at it?

--
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
1. Re:Holy irrelevant comparison, Batman! by Anne_Nonymous · 2010-10-15 07:29 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  >> Comparing an entire train's kinetic energy to that of a fundmantal particle's kinetic energy?
  This story brought to you by the mass media.
Re:I'd love to see by MagicM · 2010-10-15 07:20 · Score: 4, Funny

Bummer, I expected something exciting.
Tunnels vs. Highways? by bill_mcgonigle · 2010-10-15 07:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

Somebody here's already looked into this:
If instead of a highway from point A to point B, for travelers going all the way from A to B, what has more capacity: 4 +- lanes of asphalt driven by drivers, or a loading system at A and an unloading system at B? One would imagine multiple on and off ramps, and computer-controlled mux/demux of the carrying platforms.
I know, most people would rather pay $20 in gas + $20 in wear than a $20 toll, but, just supposin'.
Probably multiple stretches of tunnels would really be necessary with a 'pee break' station every 20 minutes or so. Sort of like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel, but you get to play cards with your kids instead of driving.

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1. Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? by chocolatetrumpet · 2010-10-15 08:16 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I'll be honest, the 40 minute savings doesn't really seem to be worth 10 billion dollars, until you realize that the USA could have built 70 of these things instead of the Iraq war...
  
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2. Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? by Sique · 2010-10-15 09:13 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It's 40 minutes for 200 trains per day with 400-1000 passengers each. So it's at least 80,000 times 40 minutes per day saved, and if the tunnel gets used for 50 years, it saves 57.600.000.000 minutes or about 1 billion hours. Makes $10 per hour saved. Sounds sensible to me.
  
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  .sig: Sique *sigh*
3. Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? by Pascal+Sartoretti · 2010-10-15 20:34 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I'll be honest, the 40 minute savings doesn't really seem to be worth 10 billion dollars, until you realize that the USA could have built 70 of these things instead of the Iraq war...
  The major goal of the Gotthard tunnel is not to improve travel time for passengers, it is to provide a high capacity line through the Alps for freight trains.
  The new tunnel is approximately 600 meters lower than the old tunnel, which makes a huge difference in electricity consumption for freight trains.
  Besides, the new tunnel has no spiral (helicoidal) tunnels anymore. I will miss them :-)
Yeah but by killmenow · 2010-10-15 07:26 · Score: 3, Funny

The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep.
Re:I'd love to see by cindyann · 2010-10-15 07:28 · Score: 2, Funny

mmmm, bacon.
Good for them by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-15 07:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't mean to turn this into a slam against America, but I guess what I'm saying is, and so be it. It's a shame that countries around the world are spending billions on engineering such projects while America is spending trillions on war.
1. Re:Good for them by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-15 08:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  As opposed to war? All of them.
2. Re:Good for them by Surt · 2010-10-15 08:08 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well, you could tunnel under the SF bay or the peninsula mountain range and relieve the ridiculous housing pressures in SV.
  You could lay FTTH pretty much across the country.
  There are a lot of great ideas out there that would help our country compete better, but instead we invest in farm subsidies because our politics are paralyzed.
  
  --
  "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
3. Re:Good for them by instagib · 2010-10-15 08:19 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Updating the nationwide electrical grid, including the ability to connect decentralized producers (solar in the south, wind in the north)?
4. Re:Good for them by eln · 2010-10-15 08:50 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  What needs to happen is someone in Washington needs to grow a spine and raise taxes to pay for what we need to pay for, and start trimming the fat going forward. The military is a great place to start
  Good luck with that. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about is far bigger and more powerful than even he could have predicted, and it's basically unstoppable at this point. Defense contractors lobby Congress to fund giant defense projects of questionable value, Congress people get those giant defense projects built in their districts, and the jobs that get created turn into votes to get them re-elected and more money for the contractors to expand their lobbying efforts. It's a cycle that's good for everyone involved except the taxpayer (other than the ones in the Congress person's district, of course).
  
  Hell, the Secretary of Defense himself got raked over the coals for even daring to suggest the military didn't actually need all of the money they get every year, and wouldn't it be great if they could stop buying all this crap they have no use for. If the guy in charge of the military can't cut the military budget, then who the hell can? Congress sure isn't going to do it, nobody ever gets elected by being "soft on defense", especially in our post-9/11 fear-based system.
Re:I'd love to see by mangu · 2010-10-15 07:35 · Score: 4, Funny

I'd love to see a story just about the drill itself
Not me. I bet it'd be pretty boring.
Meanwhile in the U.S. by Lucas123 · 2010-10-15 07:35 · Score: 5, Informative

A third of the nation's highways are in poor or mediocre shape. Massively leaking water and sewage systems are creating health hazards and contaminating rivers and streams. More than 6,000 of our nation's 115,000 bridges that are part of the national highway system are structurally deficient, and we can't even get a new tunnel built to link traffic from New York and New Jersey to Manhattan.
1. Re:Meanwhile in the U.S. by TimHunter · 2010-10-15 08:02 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Over the past few decades, governments have become entwined in a series of arrangements that drain money from productive uses and direct it toward unproductive ones.
  New Jersey can't afford to build its tunnel, but benefits packages for the state's employees are 41 percent more expensive than those offered by the average Fortune 500 company.
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12brooks.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
2. Re:Meanwhile in the U.S. by nutshell42 · 2010-10-15 10:25 · Score: 2, Insightful
  It's even worse than you think. $1 spent on road maintenance when the surface first starts to deteriorate will save $14 that you would have to spend to rebuild the roadbed if you let potholes reach the foundation. It's one of the most cost effective uses of money the government can do.
  But it doesn't get done. Why? Simple: Voters are stupid. Let me elaborate:
  
  New projects allow lots of photo ops. Signing the contracts, groundbreaking, ribbon cutting, etc. "I was assiduous about routine maintenance" doesn't get you votes.
  
  Even worse. Drivers don't like road works. If the road's a disaster they'll nevertheless approve because something had to be done, if the road was kinda ok, they'll be livid.
  
  There was a huge building spree in the 50s and 60s and a lot of infrastructure requires a major overhaul after half a century, i.e. lots and lots of money. But the Highway Trust Fund is broke because there hasn't been a raise of the gas tax for almost 20 years, and inflation means that that money's now worth less than half what it was then.
  Invest now to save later has never been the most American of attitudes and it's only gotten worse over the last decades (blame it on the Baby Boomers, they're on a spree to rape the country before they die =)
  --
  Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
3. Re:Meanwhile in the U.S. by bjohnson · 2010-10-15 11:27 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  No, it's not very interesting because it simply isn't true. On the average government employees are better paid than the average american, but that's only because government jobs tend not to be minimum-wage McJobs.
  When controlled by educational achievement, the exact opposite is true.
  http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/public_employees_dont_make_mor.html
  The average government employee with a bachelors degree makes 25% LESS than the average private industry employee with a bachelors degree.
4. Re:Meanwhile in the U.S. by Jedi+Alec · 2010-10-15 21:02 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Dream on buddy.
  *every* large organization has red tape. It increases exponentially as the organization grows linearly.
  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to burn about 10k worth of man-hours to get approval for a 2k expense.
  
  --
  
  People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Re:What kind of trains? by JSBiff · 2010-10-15 07:42 · Score: 2, Informative

Well, this isn't a complete answer, but I just noticed this in the article. . .
"It is also a cornerstone of the policy to move freight in particular from road to rail."
So I guess there will be at least some freight running through it, but there could also be passenger trains running at other times, I suppose.
Re:What kind of trains? by MozeeToby · 2010-10-15 07:49 · Score: 2, Informative

Steel on Steel wheels, larger more efficient engine, and a much more areodynamic shape (compared to trucks with shipping containers hauling the same amount of cargo) all comes together to mean that they could generate the power at a coal plant and still be an order of magnitude more efficient than a fleet of semis.
Super collider? by jimmydigital · 2010-10-15 07:50 · Score: 2, Funny

with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams
So... are we going to be colliding trains here then? I don't think I'll be getting a ticket for that route...

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Re:Kinetic Energy? by atisss · 2010-10-15 08:02 · Score: 3, Informative

2,808 bunches per beam, 1.15×10^11 protons per bunch
and

protons at an energy of 7 teraelectronvolts (1.12 microjoules) per particle
115000000000*2808 = 322920000000000 * 1/1000000 J = 322920000 Joules = 322 Megajoules, and 1 Megajoule is approximately the kinetic energy of a one-ton vehicle moving at 160 km/h. So it just takes 200 cars on highway to achieve kinetic energy of LHC
Re:Kinetic Energy? by smolloy · 2010-10-15 08:07 · Score: 3, Informative

Each particle has 5 TeV of kinetic energy.
There will be (roughly) 1e12 particles per bunch, and (roughly) 1e3 bunches per pulse.
This works out as ~800 MJ per pulse.
That is the same energy as a 1e6 kg train moving at ~80 mph, so the comparison is not as daft as it would seem.
(Note: Those numbers are all pretty rough, and I'm sure someone will be along soon to correct me soon, but the point is that the LHC beams store waaay more KE than you would imagine.)
Re:I'd love to see by cgenman · 2010-10-15 08:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's not just on the drill, but Netflix has an Extreme Engineering instant streaming episode on the Swiss Mega Tunnel. They spend a lot of time on the drill, operations, repairs, etc.
http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70113457&trkid=438381

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