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The World's Longest Tunnel

2007-06-06 10:52:40

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 18, @09:25PM

from the disaster-movie-soon-to-follow dept.

United States News

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!

Never Going to Happen

(Score:5, Insightful)

by Shihar (153932) on Wednesday April 18, @09:39PM (#18791637)

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

(Score:5, Insightful)

by manekineko2 (1052430) on Wednesday April 18, @10:10PM (#18792021)

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.