Russian engineering seems to be thinking pretty highly of itself these days. First it was the “floating power plant”:http://duenos.net/article/173/FloatingnuclearreactorbuiltbyRussians and now this, a 64 mile tunnel connecting Asia and North America across the International Date Line. The tunnel could revolutionize international trade, lowering the price of freight, passenger, and fiber-optic traffic between the world’s largest producer countries in east Asia and the largest consumer base, the United States.
The plan calls for two separate lengths of tunnel to meet halfway on the Diomede Islands pictured above. Of course this isn’t the first time a Bering Tunnel has been proposed. Before World War I, Czar Nicholas II had the idea to connect the two land masses and the “TKM-World Link tunnel”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TKM-World_Link has been on the table for over 5 years. Still, there are a lot of hurdles to jump before this idea becomes reality. In the meantime we should all consider how great it would be to take a train through Arctic waters in the world’s most active volcanic/earthquake zone.
The “Times article”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1680121.ece that reported the most recent moves towards tunneling. The picture is from “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomede_Islands.