Swiss effectively disappear Alps: World's largest tunnel opens Tunnel nerds, rejoice. The Swiss are today celebrating the opening of the world's largest underground passage to mark its completion 17 years after construction began. The €12bn (£8.5bn) Gotthard base tunnel is 57km (35 miles) long and will overtake Japan's 53.85km Seikan railway tunnel to become the world's largest and …
Standing in the vast mouth of the tunnel, overcome with awe, the Imam says to the others, "Alhamdulillah! The inside of a mountain is indeed a holy place. This reminds me, it was in a cave in a mountain where Allah revealed the holy Qu'ran to The Prophet, peace be upon him."
The Catholic priest says "Hail Mary, mother of God! Mountains are magical, mystical places. This tunnel reminds me that it was in a hole in a mountain, surrounded by rock, where Our Lord Jesus Christ's body lay for three days before he was resurrected."
The Pastor says "Quite, quite. Praise God, rock of ages. Since time immemorial a place of safety. I am reminded that The Old Testament tells us it was in caves in the mountains that the people of Israel hid from persecution by the Midianites."
Nodding sagely in religious contemplation the three await the Rabbi's comment. After a few moments of silence, they realise the Rabbi isn't with them any more. Looking around, they see him running down the tunnel, robes billowing out behind him. "Hey!" they cry out after him. "Where are you going?"
"Hallelujah! I saw the sign pointing towards Switzerland and it reminded me of where the Nazi's hid my family's gold!"
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... and are attacked by an angel with a Giant Baby Donald Trump Head?
I do not know whether the project stayed on time or on budget compared to the initial estimates, but I cannot imagine the UK being able to complete such a project at such a 'low' cost. Only half a billion pounds a year? They can't have used enough consultants! After all, look at how the projected costs of HS2 keep going up.
Our local tunnel was built in the UK and it came in on time and on budget, so it can happen.
On average it has only had to be closed a few nights every month for the five years since it opened, because they cut so many corners on the quality of the equipment used during construction...
"On average it has only had to be closed a few nights every month for the five years since it opened, because they cut so many corners on the quality of the equipment used during construction..."
And because the road it bypassed was closed as soon as the tunnel opened and was subequently ripped up with a lot of haste, traffic has to take a 20-30 mile detour to get around the blockage.
"Quality" Brutish Workmanship.
You cannot count investments as "money the UK gets back from the EU," unless those are funds coming directly out of the EU budget. Investments by private corporations may benefit from EU membership, but are not a direct result of it.
A lot of foreign investments in developed countries come from other countries. That is a benefit of free trade (eg EFTA/WTO, bilateral agreements) rather than any transnational government.
If you mean the Hauptbahnhof that is a black hole for public money, then I think you mean "Stuttgart 21". The opera house is indeed in Hamburg - the Elbphilharmonie. How an ugly eggbox like that can cost over €800m (and counting) is hard to comprehend. But nothing beats BER Airport.
OK, I'll bite: Stuttgart 21, Elbphilharmonie, BER Airport are all in Germany, so the connection is what? Nothing to do with Swiss efficiency either but never mind, the French built quite a nifty theme park... about wine. Huh! Who'd a thought it: http://www.businessinsider.com/theme-park-for-wine-lovers-france-2016-5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb6Not_p8oc
Berlin Airport? I didn't recall, but these guys ^^^^ helpfully summarise the details by way of a song and a Playmobil reconstruction.
It is under a mountain i.e. nobody's back yard
I think these critters would beg to differ - it was their backyard!
Common lizards, adders and slow-worms found at Boundless Valley were relocated to National Trust land at Highcombe Edge while grass snakes were taken to Hurthill Copse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindhead_Tunnel
"It is under a mountain i.e. nobody's back yard."
Several mountains and several hundred backyards.
Also several major fault lines. It's an impressive piece of work, especially considering that in these kinds of tunnelling projects it's never _quite_ certain what you'll encounter no matter how much seismic imaging you throw at the problem.
Amongst other things, the Swiss factored in time for delays for such things (which weren't needed), unlike british projects which are run on hopelessly optimistic timelines (Crossrail was relatively straightforward as the geology is very well known and it was archeology which was the big delay factor) and never designed to cater to slight usage expansions, resulting in having to "do it over" when the project proves insufficient for the task.
Or maybe they learnt from the Crossrail team, achieving exactly the same.
The Programme Team there have been absolutely ruthless at allowing no project creep, with the one exception of the extension from Maidenhead to Reading. Therein lies the way to achieve the holy grail of on-time, on-budget.
uk.gov IT could learn a thing or two from that.....
Crossrail, really?
The project planned in the 1940's and still yet to happen?
It's easy to be "in-budget" when nobody remembers what the original budget even was.
It's easy to be "on-time" when you still haven't delivered anything and "on-time" is supposed to be 2017 (or actually 2018 now, possibly).
Literally, Crossrail is the entire antithesis of your counterpoint.
> The completed tunnel travels up to 2.3km below the surface of the mountains above and through rock that reaches temperatures of 46˚C without ventilation due to a high lithostatic pressure from rock above it – which can measure up to 2,500m in some sections*.
So which is it? 2.3km or 2.5km?
> I was also a bit curious why they didn't try to use this heat source...
It's only hot because it's insulated - by the "up to" 1 1/2 miles of rock above it. The amount of heat will probably be quite small and be removed fairly quickly.
That's the problem with geothermal energy - once you start taking heat out of rocks they get cooler. The rate you can take the heat out is limited by the rate at while the heat flows through the surrounding rocks to replenish what you've taken out - and that's generally relatively low for the same reason (that there's a large amount of rock between the heat source and where you are trying to take it out.
TL;DR version - there won't be enough heat to make it worth while.
"TL;DR version - there won't be enough heat to make it worth while."
Which is the same reason why geothermal plants aren't worth building(*), except in a few very limited cases where you're on top of a magmatic hotspot such as Iceland.
(*) The heat they produce is low grade, resulting in thermally inefficient production and the heat output declines substantially over time no matter how many new boreholes are sunk. On top of that you often have "interesting" side effects - the Icelandic hot lake being one, but "The Craters of the Moon" at Wairaki being a more common counterpoint that's not particularly beneficial unless you happen to be a tourist (plus you need to get rid of the bore water, which is invaribly highly polluted with dissolved "stuff", either by reinjecting it into another bore (high energy requirements) or dumping it in a river with associated fishkill, etc.)
Which is the same reason why geothermal plants aren't worth building
Well, the Southampton plant seems to be doing quite well.
Vic.
Me too. My copy-and-paste buffer contains this, "rock that reaches temperatures of 46˚C without ventilation due to a high lithostatic pressure from rock above it "
i.e. In my basement I've squeezed a big rock in a big vice. It's been heating my house for the past 26 years. It just stays at 46°C, like, forever. Amazing...
To be fair, lithostatic pressure can release some heat; it can raise the melting point of a stratum to the point where it crystallizes, releasing latent heat (phase-change energy) via conduction. (As this source notes there can be a net heat gain, or loss, from changes from one solid phase to another as well, of course.)
But, yeah, it's not going to be the primary contributor.
In my basement I've squeezed a big rock in a big vice. It's been heating my house for the past 26 years.
Given a big enough vise (not "vice"), a big enough rock, and enough of a squeeze, and that would work. Well, and enough tolerance for the heat output. You'd get back as much energy as you put in, less what's absorbed into phase-change latencies.
It just stays at 46°C, like, forever.
Again, given a big enough sample, you could achieve an effect that, while it wouldn't be exactly 46C or "forever", would remain close enough to that temperature for quite a while.
As reductio ad absurdam goes, you need more absurdam.
I wonder if that comes as a comfort or an annoyance to those that they left behind. If someone you know and love is killed on some landmark construction project might there be a small degree of comfort that they met their demise in a slightly heroic could-only-happen-on-a-project-like-this accident, rather than some mundane 'could happen anywhere' workaday mishap?
I hate it when they use non standard units.
An empire state building is 0.4762 cubic football fields. And so you can visualize the length of the tunnel, its 741.5 Jumbo jets, wingtip to wingtip, (the last one will not fly because it has only one wing
Hope that helps.
Holy crap! That is freakin' bizzare. What's all the Dr Who furry caterpillar acrobatics about? Did they dig something out that had been trapped for 14 million years? When they come to open the (*spit*) Elizabeth Line, I hope it's a much more English affair. Sadiq Khan with a tartan thermos of tea, looking at his watch every now and again, reading the Metro until the train pulls in to the platform and he gets up and says "Ay. S'all-reet that is. It'll do, I reckon."
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Boyles law? (is rock just a very, very dense gas waiting to be liberated by heat and pressure?)
I also heard that they had to take special engineering account of the pressure induced weight of all that rock above so that the tunnel doesn't deform too much and eventually get squished out of existence.
"I also heard that they had to take special engineering account of the pressure induced weight of all that rock above"
"The softer rock threatened to deform the tunnel, so engineers had to develop a new concept for tunnel engineering - flexible steel ribs that were anchored into the tunnel walls and then lined with concrete to absorb the rock pressure and protect the integrity of the tunnel. It was the first time so-called tunnel-lining machines were used in railway tunnel construction."
[http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2015/10/gotthard-base-tunnel.cfm ]
"How does that work then?"
It doesn't. Boyle's law only specifies that temperature changes when you change pressure, not when the pressure is static.
The answer is that the crust of the Earth gets hot fast as you go underground. Because the Earth is hot inside.
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Well, it might get done. Eventually. Over budget, over time and come out in the wrong spot.
Plus it would only be half as long and would collapse, naturally just AFTER the dignitaries had left and the glowing news articles had been published.
Most of the overage in cost would be in attorneys fighting to get permission to dig to start with. I'm sure at least 20 years would be eaten up making sure that some worm (who can not be genetically differentiated from many other worms but does have a slightly different coloration) that only lives in one cave could be saved from the trauma of a tunnel being blasted within a few meters. The only way to prevent that trauma would be to give lots of money in fees to "Friends of the slightly discolored cave worm".
The high cost of HS2 is primarily because it's had to swallow up the costs of rebuilding Euston. (Network Rail were about to green-light a rebuild to their own design around the time HS2 was announced. Network Rail then realised they could get HS2 Ltd. to pay for their grand plan.)
It has also been forced to put lots more of the line into tunnels to appease the usual NIMBYs and BANANAs along the route.
In fairness, the Channel Tunnel isn't all that much shorter and is still working today. It also took rather less than 17 years to build, though the high-speed link (today's HS1) took substantially longer to design, build and open.
"It also took rather less than 17 years to build"
Chalk is somewhat softer than granite and basalt (amongst other things)
The irony is that this tunnel is one of the biggest NIMBY projects ever - being driven by the Swiss dislike of an endless processing of heavy transport through their picturesque mountain towns.
Kudos to the Swiss... Hope to use the tunnel sometime, but fingers crossed all lessons have been learned from this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc_Tunnel#The_1999_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc_tunnel_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seconds_From_Disaster
Took as long, was on budget instead of 190% over budget, covered 10x the distance and probably will have fewer problems (leaks etc.) in the future.
Granted it didn't have existing infrastructure in the way, but it went through a fucking Alp! Guess we should have hired the Swiss for it.
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