Russia plans $65bn tunnel to America

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1680121.ece

by pwg • 15 years ago

181 95 15 years ago

timesonline.co.uk

Dramatize• 15 years ago

Makes you wonder how they will deal with shifting tectonic plates?

ceejayoz• 15 years ago

I'd imagine California and Japan have given a decent amount of experience with that.

hugh312• 15 years ago

Earthquake resistance, yes. But building a tunnel right across the middle of a spreading mid-oceanic ridge? Nobody has ever done that before and it seems problematic.

blhack3• 15 years ago

You don't built it underground, you build it floating in the water (anchored to the sea floor). Build stretch into the tunnel, and then expand it every $foo years as needed.

brianbreslin2• 15 years ago

ice would be a huge issue in this. thats the big impediment to bridge building in the arctic north.

blhack3• 15 years ago

Not to mention the fact that Canada is sitting on what is considered to be the largest oil reserve in the world.

This is also a very smart long-term strategic move to run a pipeline from Canada to Eurasia and Africa.

hugh312• 15 years ago

This is also a very smart long-term strategic move to run a pipeline from Canada to Eurasia and Africa

This is what I don't get. Isn't there plenty of oil in Eurasia? And plenty of demand for oil in the Americas? Do the Russians really expect that in the future the flow of oil will go in that direction?

blhack3• 15 years ago

Well they could be playing the long-hand on this.

Oil is obviously a finite resource, and very soon, (when oil becomes much more scarce than it is now) whoever controls the oil will control a large portion of the world's economy.

If Russia (I assume you're talking about Siberian oil here?) has a ton of oil, it would make sense for them to sit on it and wait for the rest of the world to deplete their own supplies before drilling.

xyzzyz• 15 years ago

There's only plenty of oil in Russia, in central and western Europe the supply is much smaller, and most of it is under North Sea. Many Europe countries strive for diversity of oil and gas sources, so that they're not dependent on Russia in their fuel needs. However I don't think that ridiculously long pipeline from Canada (which would surely go through Russia anyway) would be very satisfactory.

tesseract3• 15 years ago

[2007]

The first hard part is building the tunnel.

The second hard part, as alluded to in the article, is that there is essentially no infrastructure (highways, railroads) within 2000 miles of the Russian terminus, and the Alaskan side is not exactly a thriving metropolis either.

tesseract3• 15 years ago

Also I don't have the numbers in front of me so it would be cool if anyone can back this up, but I believe transport by ship is cheaper per container-mile than both rail and highway transport. Is there a reason that balance would drastically change in the near future?

jonknee• 15 years ago

Harder to transmit electricity and data with ships (not that you need a road for that either though, but the article seemed to hit on the non-transport benefits quite a bit).

pchristensen• 15 years ago

Rail is faster than sea and truck but can't do last-mile like trucks and is more expensive than sea. Sea is the cheapest, slowest form and obviously only works port to port. Truck is fast and flexible but most expensive.

Not sure how the math works out if you have to ship stuff across Siberia, Alaska, and Canada.

onemoreact• 15 years ago

Boats rarely get to take a direct route between A and B. Also the time needed to load and unload boats is a significant cost for short trips.

prawn2• 15 years ago

Both sides would develop very quickly if this tunnel were created.

madaxe• 15 years ago

Don't forget that they'll have to cross a few dozen active fault lines, too. It's not going to happen.

Gilpo• 15 years ago

You nailed it.

hugh312• 15 years ago

Does anyone have a good handle on freight costs?

If I wanted to send a container of stuff from (say) China to the US, would it be cheaper to send it in a ship, or go round the long way through a Bering Strait tunnel (assuming such a thing actually already existed)?

jleader• 15 years ago

I suspect that ship would beat train hands-down on costs, but train could still win for time-critical uses.

analyst74• 15 years ago

freight cost is tricky to compare, but considering Trans-Siberian Railway is competing with the long-way sea route, and is mainly winning on speed and safety thanks to pirates. *

I think shipping via ship is going to be way cheaper than the to-be-built tunnel, unless, maybe if you are shipping from Siberia to Alaska?

*reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Developm...

hugh312• 15 years ago

Right. In that case I really can't see much use for this tunnel.

ChrisNorstrom3• 15 years ago

The plan alone worries me greatly for the wildlife in Alaska, it's one of the world's last refuges for untouched nature and the last thing we need is to send any sort of human traffic in that direction.

If I were the richest person in the world I would probably buy up as much land as possible and keep civilization away from it. Keep it wild for future generations.

meric2• 15 years ago

I thought you had noble intentions when you said "... last refuges for untouched nature and the last thing we need is to send any sort of human traffic in that direction.".

but when you mentioned "...for future generations.", turned out not.

timerickson• 15 years ago

Perhaps he meant for future generations to admire from a distance?

ChrisNorstrom3• 15 years ago

Yes I meant to save the wildlife for future generations to admire not to bulldozer and pave over. In the US we have 30% federal owned land reserved for things like parks and wild life areas but a lot of it is areas that no one really wanted (desert) or areas where there aren't any people anyway.

Future generations shouldn't have to travel to another state to get to a nature reserve.

hugh312• 15 years ago

Alaksa is really really big.

Rail lines aren't really all that wide.

Compute the fraction of Alaska and Siberia's land from which you'd be able to see or hear the trains going past and it's... quite small.

wisty2• 15 years ago

A road or railway can impact quite a large area, due to fringe effects. It can cut migration paths. The most valuable nature reserves are the ones that are completely untouched, and a long way from any human activity. On the other hand little islands urban forest are just a waste of real estate (and a great source of wild animals on roads). Wildlife "corridors" may be a useless waste of space, or incredibly useful ... I'm not too sure. I guess it depends on how the animals use them.

Hopefully won't do too much damage, though. As you say, Alaska is really big.

Turing_Machine• 15 years ago

"Alaska is really really big."

Indeed it is. http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/ded/dev/student_info/images/... (yes, this is in correct scale).

Tsagadai• 15 years ago

There is no such thing as "untouched nature". Humans have been almost everywhere on the planet since the late 19th century (exploration of polar regions, deserts and submarines). There are hundreds of thousands of native Alaskans who have a problem with your idea that no one ever lived there.

ChrisNorstrom3• 15 years ago

True. But native Alaskans don't pave everything over with malls and parking lots.

=========

Also you can't have a rail line that goes on for thousands of miles without any maintanance stations, rest stops, etc... I'm worried that small towns will pop up along the route, as more trade occurs along the route the towns will grow and then the shit hits the fan from there.

nivertech• 15 years ago

Russia's biggest problem is centralized major cities: Moscow and St Petersburg, everything else is a "province".

US major cities are spread geographically: Boston, NYC, DC, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, SF, LA.

Seattle was the gateway to Alaska. What's a gateway to Siberia? Vladivostok? Does Vladivostok has something comparable to Amazon, Microsoft and Boeing?

timf• 15 years ago

That article is four years old. The project was greenlighted by the Kremlin last week, according to this: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3764606/Plans-for-...

aasarava• 15 years ago

The project may have been blessed by some official at the Kremlin, but no doubt it would need to be approved -- and even partly financed -- by the US and Alaskan governments to actually happen. It would be nice if reporters even bothered to ask if anyone in office on this side of the ocean had even heard of the Kremlin's renewed interest in this.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44212283/ns/world_news-europe/

gritzko• 15 years ago

A regional news agency says the project is in "research stage", not greenlighted yet. http://vostokmedia.com/n113027.html

mbreese• 15 years ago

Funny, it used to be a $65B project (The Times, 4 years ago)... now it's a $100B project (The Sun, this week).

Anechoic• 15 years ago

That doesn't sound too surprising based on the typical price of construction materials between then and now, (oil for example has increased by about 35% since then). There may have also been project changes and/or additions that also contributed to the higher estimate.

avree• 15 years ago

Based off rising cost of materials and inflation, that sounds about right.

maxxxxx• 15 years ago

Wait until it's done. It will be 200 or more.

tententwenty• 15 years ago

But Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house?

AshleysBrain• 15 years ago

Any particular reason this article from 2007 has been resubmitted now? Has a deal been struck at last? Any developments? Or...?

kloncks2• 15 years ago

Approved by Kremlin last week.

maxray• 15 years ago

The only source of this info is an article in The Sun, which is as trustworthy as a madman in the street.

danvoell• 15 years ago

Does it start at Sarah Palin's house?

SeanLuke• 15 years ago

Given Russia's history in high-tech construction (and particularly tunnels, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lefortovo_tunnel) I'm surprised that an oligarch-financed tunnel would get a positive response from the US.

ahi2• 15 years ago

Considering the success of the Big Dig in Boston, I'm not sure we can criticize too much.

clistctrl• 15 years ago

Boston is not in siberia.

seagaia• 15 years ago

This is AWESOME. Well, at a naive and fleeting glance it is. I'm sure it has political, environmental, etc. etc. implications. And it got the green light. I'm wondering how big the tunnel is. I would assume it would have to fit many many trains at once, I mean one or two tracks would probably be a waste...

pedalpete• 15 years ago

The smart part of this equation is in placing Russia as a central connection of goods through Europe/Asia/North America.

Much like Eremites is trying to do in being an air transport hub between Asia and Europe.

prawn2• 15 years ago

I think you mean "Emirates." An eremite is a religious recluse.

brianbreslin2• 15 years ago

There is a pending battle over oil rights under the arctic shelf, russia's stake is potentially trillions of barrels of natural gas and billions of oil in that section of the world. As cold weather and deep sea drilling options expand, they will have to build out more stuff in this section of Siberia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_exploration_in_the_Ar...

nostromo• 15 years ago

A lot of commenters are mentioning that the distance is greater than the distance by sea -- but the difference isn't as much as you might think.

Look at the shortest route between LA and Beijing and you'll see that you already go over Siberia and the coast of Alaska. http://www.gcmap.com/map?P=LAX-PEK

wisty2• 15 years ago

Let me guess - some people don't understand cartographic projections? The shortest distance between two points is not a strait line on a map[1], especially when you are a long way from the equator.

[1] For most maps. Gnomic maps (image - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gnomonic_projection_SW.jpg) are designed to show the shortest distance as a straight line. I think the Dymaxion Map aka Fuller Map (image - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dymaxion_map_unfolded.png) is also OK.

hugh312• 15 years ago

Well, it's easy to understand cartographic projections without necessarily having an intuitive grasp of 'em.

profquail• 15 years ago

The shortest distance between two points is not a strait line on a map

You're right. The shortest distance between two points lies on a 'great circle':

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Great_circle

peteretep• 15 years ago

> a strait line on a map

Pun intentional, right? ;-)

ximeng• 15 years ago

For those with WebGL, this is helpful to visualise:

http://data-arts.appspot.com/globe

antimarketing• 15 years ago

Thanks for this, do you happen to have any other helpful links?

beej712• 15 years ago

In Soviet Russia, the tunnel bores you!

hugh312• 15 years ago

While I must admit that is one of the better applications of the In Soviet Russia meme I've seen, I'm still modding you down for it.

beej712• 15 years ago

Oh, I'd hoped the pun would save it. Alas!

pnathan• 15 years ago

Interesting! As someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, this sounds really cool. Maintained, it could really open up some economic expansion in that part of the world.

zavulon• 15 years ago

I can only imagine what (and who) will be smuggled via that tunnel.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

That was my first thought. Then again, it wouldn't be anything that isn't already coming in via ships.

hugh312• 15 years ago

It's worth noting that the Bering Strait end of Alaska is as far from Seattle as Mexico City is from... well, Seattle.

radishroar• 15 years ago

Any good Palin jokes?

strait• 15 years ago

No, but as I sit here I can feel Putin burrowing his head into Alaska's groundspace.

zubairov• 15 years ago

Absolutely crazy idea. I lived there in Siberia, there not even a railways available. The reasonable-price logistics is only possible 2 month a year. This idea is a political hype. Such kind of idiotic projects appear shortly before elections and pass away shortly after.

ctdonath• 15 years ago

Seems one can make a decent living from proposing mega-projects with price tags so vast and political inspiration so great it's not hard to to convince someone to commission a multi-year "study" at a "paltry" cost big enough to keep a small team living comfortably.

Another example project was construction of a billion-dollar indoor ski resort near Atlanta. Somebody was making a good buck "studying" that one ... until the nearby lake, proximity chosen to supply water for making snow, dried up.

Russia plans $65bn tunnel to America

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