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Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record

Posted by Soulskill on 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.

19 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Largest made by man by Anonymous Coward · · 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 Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, some women made a tunnel 62km in length, so it's good to see the men stepping up.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    2. Re:Largest made by man by rossdee · · Score: 5, Informative

      We don't know what aliens have built on some other planet in some other solar system...

  2. Gotthard by MrEricSir · · 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 · · 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.
  3. Holy irrelevant comparison, Batman! by DriedClexler · · 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.
  4. Re:I'd love to see by MagicM · · Score: 4, Funny

    Bummer, I expected something exciting.

  5. Yeah but by killmenow · · Score: 3, Funny

    The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep.

  6. Good for them by Anonymous Coward · · 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 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As opposed to war? All of them.

    2. Re:Good for them by Surt · · 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 eln · · 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.

  7. Re:I'd love to see by mangu · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd love to see a story just about the drill itself

    Not me. I bet it'd be pretty boring.

  8. Meanwhile in the U.S. by Lucas123 · · 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 · · 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

  9. Re:Kinetic Energy? by atisss · · 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

  10. Re:Kinetic Energy? by smolloy · · 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.)

  11. Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? by chocolatetrumpet · · 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...

    --
    Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
  12. Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? by Sique · · 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.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*