Nicaragua Gives Chinese Firm Contract To Build Alternative To Panama Canal 323
McGruber writes with this news from late last week: "The Guardian is reporting that Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The new route will be a higher-capacity alternative to the 99-year-old Panama Canal, which is currently being widened at the cost of $5.2bn. Last year, the Nicaraguan government noted that the new canal should be able to allow passage for mega-container ships with a dead weight of up to 250,000 tonnes. This is more than double the size of the vessels that will be able to pass through the Panama Canal after its expansion, it said."
Re:it's too wide (Score:5, Insightful)
not to mention how stupid it is to completely cut your country in half.
Yeah, that MIssisippi river forces people to ride thousands of miles further to take their horses from Mississippi to Texas. Oh wait, they've been building bridges and fording rivers since before the colonial era?
Sure, it is a longer route than Panama, but I suspect the shipping volumes are large enough that it might be profitable. China is likely viewing this strategically - they've been taking the long view far more than the US in recent years, with the exceptions of their environmental policy and the US willingness to invest in blowing things up.
Re:it's too wide (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at a map of Nicaragua. It's at least twice if not 3x as wide as Panama at its thinnest point. What an unbelievably stupid idea, not to mention how stupid it is to completely cut your country in half.
In the US, our country is "completely cut in half" by a naturally occurring canal, if you will. We've used a technologies known as the "bridge" and "ferry" to deal with that. Nicaragua could probably do the same.
Also note that part of that distance through Nicaragua is already water: Lake Nicaragua. Every plan ever for a canal through that region -- going back to the 19th century -- has included the lake in the route.
Re:Why waist the money? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have not even RTFA yet, but I believe I've put more thought into this issue than you have. I've been to Panama and watched the canal operate, and I have some thoughts on this issue which have persisted since. First, the Panama canal is driven by fresh water which is then thrown away. The redesign reuses a portion of the water (a third, I think) so that they can make more runs per day, not so that they can save any water. There are literally people dying on this planet for lack of fresh water and this is just used as hydraulic fluid and then thrown into the ocean while ships pass by. Everything is wrong with this.
If its going to take 5.2 billion to widen the Panama canal, how much will it cost to build a new one across a country more than twice the width of Panama? More than $40 billion I think.
It's cheaper to dig a canal than to widen one, because you're going to be digging through a bunch of dry land with no special engineering issues. Then you knock the ends out. It's cheaper still if they import a bunch of Chinese slave labor.
Also the article says the aim is to "weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans." The Panama canal is owned by Panama. Has been since 1999.
And Panama is 0wned by the USA. Has been since 1989.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Replying to my own post – I copied OP link, not Operation Plowshare’s link. Here it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare [wikipedia.org]
Re:it's too wide (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Short on details (Score:4, Insightful)
currently it's being "attacked" by tons of sewage pumped into it each day.
How can such a Friend Of The Workers, Friend Of Human Rights And Hater Of Capitalism like Daniel Ortega allow such a thing to happen?
Re:Short on details (Score:5, Insightful)
The US rail infrastructure could not remotely handle the amount of cargo that has to move. We are dependent on big trucks for cross country shipping because of it. Getting a country like nicaragua to approve the canal is orders of magnitude easier than convincing every local govt in the US to let you run new rails through it (on the east coast lots of rail lines are being torn up for bike paths)
Then we are in a world of hurt, because there are not enough highways and more importantly drivers for big trucks. To expand rail capacity does not require local govt approval. The railroads already own the right of away. Convincing them to spend billions of dollars without a taxpayer subsidy like trucking and shipping gets (who builds those highways and ports?), now that is a different story. Where local govt comes in is when cities expand to where the railroad is and they want the railroad to move. But that is a little bit like people who build housing near an airport and complain about the noise.
Studies have shown that the most efficient land based cargo transport is rail for long distance with truck for the last 250 miles. That would mean the train stops only every 500 miles or so. If you notice what the railroads have been doing post-regulation, that is exactly what they have been working towards for the past 40 years. Modern railroading is not what our parents and grand parents grew up with.