Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record 163
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.
Re:Gotthard (Score:1, Informative)
Gotthard? Hadron?
Who the hell is coming up with these names? Are they trying to sell Viagra?
Gotthard is the name of the actual pass going over the alps... (above the tunnel).
its a pretty neat drive. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Pass )
Re:I'd love to see (Score:2, Informative)
Meanwhile in the U.S. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What kind of trains? (Score:3, 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? (Score:1, Informative)
The trains travelling through the Gotthard are already powered by hyrdo power from local dams/generators in the mountains built specifically to supply the rail line.
Re:What kind of trains? (Score:3, 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.
In the meantime, the Hudson River Tunnel: canceled (Score:1, Informative)
In the meantime, we (as in the US) cancel the Hudson River tunnel. Hats off!
Re:Kinetic Energy? (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:Meanwhile in the U.S. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12brooks.html?_r=1&th&emc=th [nytimes.com]
Re:What kind of trains? (Score:1, Informative)
The tunnel will be used for freight trains and for high speed passenger trains. Passenger trains can travel with up to 250 km/h inside the tunnel.
Re:Kinetic Energy? (Score:4, 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:Largest made by man (Score:5, Informative)
We don't know what aliens have built on some other planet in some other solar system...
Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? (Score:5, 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...
Re:What kind of trains? (Score:1, Informative)
The tunnel will be used for mixed traffic, meaning freight trains traveling at up to 160 km/h (100 mph) and passenger trains traveling at up to 250 km/h (155 mph). (The train schedule planning on mixed lines is an art in and of itself, since the passenger trains obviously do catch up with the freight trains.) Most of the trains will be electric trains powered through a catenary. The same stuff that you'll find anywhere in Western Europe.
The electricity question is a hard one. Electricity production is a long-term planned (by government or huge corporations) economy. They took the decision to build the tunnel in 1993. What you'd really want to know is what kind of power plants they have been building since that decision. I don't know.
Re:What kind of trains? (Score:1, Informative)
The electricity question is a hard one. Electricity production is a long-term planned (by government or huge corporations) economy. They took the decision to build the tunnel in 1993. What you'd really want to know is what kind of power plants they have been building since that decision. I don't know.
According to SBB Infrastructure [mct.sbb.ch] over 70% of the energy required comes from hydroelectric sources, and the remaining 30% from nuclear power.
Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? (Score:4, 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.
Re:Good for them (Score:1, Informative)
Well, you could tunnel under the SF bay or the peninsula mountain range and relieve the ridiculous housing pressures in SV.
They already did that. Over 300k people ride BART every day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BART
Re:Tunnels vs. Highways? (Score:3, 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