Something I never expected, worth sharing. I wonder if they’ll have an exit for Yamal?
From Slashdot, news that leads me to think that someday I’ll be able to put my car on the train in Alaska and drive it off in Russia like they do with the Eurotunnel.
In what could easily be one of the boldest infrastructure developments ever announced, the Russian Government has given the go-ahead to build a transcontinental railway linking Siberia with North America.
The massive undertaking would traverse the Bering Strait with the world’s longest tunnel – a project twice the length of the Chunnel between England and France. The project aims to feed North America with raw goods from the Siberian interior and beyond, but it could also provide a key link to developing a robust renewable energy transmission corridor that feeds wind and tidal power across vast distances while linking a railway network across 3/4 of the Northern Hemisphere.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Why do I think the renewable energy ideas in this story were dropped in for no other reason to distract from the fact that the trains will haul coal — lots of coal. And, the more coal.
“The project aims to feed North America with raw goods from the Siberian interior and beyond”
Water is the cheapest form of transport and its main port, Vladivostok, is well served by both road and rail from the interior. How would building a tunnel under the Bering Strait reduce the cost of shipping raw materials from the Russian Far East to North America?
And more coal again. Siberia is closer to North America than it is to Europe by a long shot. A Berunnel, although ambitious, is amazing, but: small matter of the railroad gauge. 60 inches in Russia, 56 1/2 inches in “standard gauge” country. This will mean some interesting inventions to either change the gauge on the fly, or change the undercarriage…and overcome the ancient Russian paranoia about invasion by rail (and the reason for the five-foot gauge in the first place).
Of course, the permafrost paranoia is the other big hurdle, but that didn’t stip the Chinese from building a rail line to Lhasa, Tibet. The Alaskan region, on the other hand, will be fun to traverse, but not because of engineering issues.
The Yamal Tree Rest Stop, although farfetched as the dickens, is not outside the realm of possibility. The Briffa memorial Loo, on the other hand, is.
They just knew they could find a use for all those redundant Cold War moles…
But you still can’t drive to the UK! There is a tunnel, yes, but you have to put your car on a train. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to actually let French drivers drive straight out of Franceland and onto our roads. We would have expected them to swap sides halfway down the tunnel!
Hmm, driving from UK to America. Sounds fun.
Oh that’s just great. Hoover had his dam & now Obama will have his tunnel.
Just let Obama get word of this and it’ll be part of his jobs plan and a way for him to blow another trillion dollars building the Obama/Putin tunnel (or the Putin/Obama tunnel when seen from the Siberian side).
The Channel Tunnel is half the length, carries huge volumes and still loses money. And, they want to ship raw materials TO Canada? Is today April 1st?
John Tofflemire says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:17 am
A couple of reasons. One is climate. Vladivostok is in ice-free waters year-round, but the run to Anchorage or to Seattle is ugly.
The other reason is trans-shipment. Every time you go from rail to ship or back again it costs money. Not as much in this containerized age, but still every container has to be picked up one by one from the train, and moved to some position on the ship, and set down, and locked down … then the process has to be reversed at the other end.
As such direct rail from Moscow or Siberia to New York seems a big step up.
Regarding Vladivostok I find that there are container ships going to other smaller Russian ports, and to South Korea, China, Vietnam, and Japan. Nothing to the US, though, you’d need to trans-ship again likely in Japan. Another argument for direct rail.
w.
History anorak alert! The wider guage was not a major problem for the German invader. Trains could be adapted quickly. The biggest problem was the significantly longer range that Russian trains could manage before water stops necessary. The german trains could not make the range between water stops…. So there!
The Spanish railway network was deliberately constructed with a gauge different from that of France, in order to hinder invasion across the Pyrenees – they didn’t want another Napoleonic type adventure … so the ingenious railway engineers built stock which could change gauge at the frontier. But they did need a different locomotive.
Just what we need, more Russians driving in tunnels!
World Landbridge (5) – Bering Strait & Siberia
A Tour of NAWAPA – A PLAN OF HOPE AND DEVELOPMENT FOR AMERICA
“John Tofflemire says:
How would building a tunnel under the Bering Strait reduce the cost of shipping raw materials from the Russian Far East to North America?”
Speed. Time is money.
Much faster by train than by ship.
As this :
“With its internal projects getting closer to completion, China’s new goal is to continue on with a HSR revolution internationally in order to create two-day HSR trip times between Beijing and London”
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/12tJz)”
Drive from England to South America should be one hell of a roadtrip
Easy entry into the US for all those spies from Moscow.
Transferring wind power down a tunnel will blow the trains off the track.
Russia does have some standard gauge tracks, between Europe and western Russia.
Mike Bromley the Kurd says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:26 am
And more coal again. Siberia is closer to North America than it is to Europe by a long shot. A Berunnel, although ambitious, is amazing, but: small matter of the railroad gauge. 60 inches in Russia, 56 1/2 inches in “standard gauge” country. This will mean some interesting inventions to either change the gauge on the fly, or change the undercarriage…and overcome the ancient Russian paranoia about invasion by rail (and the reason for the five-foot gauge in the first place).
No problem – it’s already done when you go from Western Europe to Russia. Mind you, I hope it’s a better operation than the one my daughter saw a couple of years ago. In her train, the bogie was disconnected from inside her coach and the whole thing was lifted off the standard gauge set-up and lowered onto its Russian equivalent whilst she and her fellow travellers were still on board.
She thought it was great (although sometimes things that are great when you’re twenty become less so with age!).
No problem getting to Yamal by train – not quite on the peninsula proper, but you get to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labytnangi – close to Salekhard.
A logistical nightmare but not beyond the feat of man in practice. Its Carbon Footprint will be enormous!!!!! As pointed out the minor detail of gauge plays a significnat role. Will it be nicknamed the Puma tunnel or the Obatin tunnel? The cost – forget Global Warming, this will cost trillions, be delayed for years, nearly go bust, then go bust, have more taxdollars pumped into it to save face, then finally be built only to be dogged all the way by all sorts of contruction issues, then the reality of running it & making it pay, some! 🙂 Sorry to sound negative, I hate doing that. On the other hand, when the sea level rises 20 feet a’la AG, can’t they just build a giant water flume that can be jacked up each end in turn & let gravity do it’s thing? Oh I forgot gravity will be distorted due to AGW by that time:-(
OT – BBC Radio 2 breakfast show news this morning, “scientists” reckon that there are some 90%+ species yet to be discovered on the planet?????????? (Someone did a calkalashun I spect on a puter!). All that despite those dying out from us doing “our” thing. How on Earth do they know this, but that’s the level of news reporting here in the PDREU’s pet BBC these days!
News flash: after horrific capital investment, wind and tidal will no way be worth transmitting across vast distances. Power losses increase dramatically with any large distance, much less “vast” ones. They will also eat Desertec’s lunch.
Sounds totally daft to me
Eeer tis folks! Different version of it from their Website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14616161
– hope it works!
Unfortunately it seems to be indirectly endorsed by Lord (we’re all going to die warmista) May former Head of the Royal Society, the guys who come up with things like “heavier than air flying machines are impossible”, Lord Kelvin, 1895, Head of RS! It’s also by BBC science correspondent Richard (we’re all going to die warmista) Black, the one who never attends anything much expounding contrarian views of AGW!
Hoax, or a fraud.
This smells like a hoax to me. This makes so little sense that I can’t see anyone being willing to invest in it.
Let’s start with the smallest of the obvious problems; the railways. The difficulty in transshipping was mentioned in a comment above, but it’s about the same as transferring from one train to the other. That would have to be done at some point, because Russia uses Russian Gauge rail, 4 ft 11 5⁄6 in while America and Canada use standard gauge, 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in. So, the cargo needs to change trains.
Then, the weather; Northern Alaska and Northern Siberia in winter would not be good places to run trains, to say the least.
However, that’s the least of the problems. They seem to be forgetting that a tunnel can’t connect the railway networks. Why? BECAUSE THEY DON’T EXIST! The closest point in Alaska with a rail line is around Fairbanks, 600 miles away, and there aren’t even any roads. And that line goes only to Anchorage. Alaska has no rail link to Canada of the US. The closest Canadian rail-head is in Ft. Nelson, well over a thousand miles (by road on the Alaska Highway) away. However, that’s easy, compared to Siberia; the closest point in the Trans-Siberian railway (the only one in the region) would be in the Amur region, just a few miles from northeasternmost China. That rail line would end up being at least 2500 miles just to get to the bearing strait, and would need to cross at least a dozen major mountain ranges.
The Chunnel linked two major rail networks, separated by 30 miles of water, by going under a strait that already had an enormous amount of trade crossing it. This Bearing Strait tunnel would merely be the largest water crossing of a rail system that would entail at least 4000 miles of new track across the worst terrain on the planet, to bridge a gap that currently has almost zero commerce. To say this is folly would be overly charitable.
The “green energy” part? As laughable as the rest. Even if they did build wind farms in northeastern Siberia, Where would they send the electricity to? Maybe Fairbanks, but that’s it, and lets not forget transmission losses over distance. If they wanted to do that, a subsea power cable would work just fine, but stringing a thousand miles of high-tension lines would make the already-absurd cost of wind power even more insane.
What are they gonna build tomorrow? A tunnel to Australia?!?
They’re doing just fine with the boats 🙂
TO: Mr. Barack Hussein Obama;
Please quit your shopaholic activity and think about your country for just one moment.
People w/o jobs, economy at its worst… And all you will promise us is a worthless tunnel?!?!?!?
After including the cost of transshipment, the cost of taking a freight car loaded with grain or a container full of electronics between interior points in North America and Europe will be far cheaper by rail. The trading opportunities that this opens up will be tremendous. Oh, and it validates Sarah Palin’s sentiment that Russia is an important nearby neighbor and trading partner that cannot be ignored.