ZAP // Tom Patterson / Wikipedia
A subacket tunnel from Lisbon to New York: with the current technology, a mirage
The idea is irresistible: enter a train in London or Lisbon and emerge 54 minutes later in New York, traveling through a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean. This type of travel is described in some recent proposals. But is it a really possible transatlantic tunnel – or science fiction?
The short answer is simple: with the current technology, probably such It is not possible – And the only way to travel from Lisbon from New York would be on a long trip.
First of all, the 54 -minute trip like the one that recently required vacuum trains A Viajar 8.000 km/h — technology that does not yet exist.
With conventional rail speeds, the trip would take about 15 hoursreturning-a slower than an 8 hour flight.
Currently, the Longer submarine tunnel in the world It is the tunnel of the spot, which has a underwater section of 37.9 kilometers that connects England and France.
The construction of the tunnel, nicknamed Chunnelit took six years, involved 13,000 workers and cost £ 4.65 billion in 1994 (12 billion pounds, or 15 billion euros currently).
Depending on where the transatlantic tunnel was built, it could cost much more – Both in time and money. The project, for example, is a 14 km railway tunnel between New York and New Jersey, which is expected to take 12 years and cost 15.2 billion euros.
“This project is really 10 different projectseach of which is almost a megaproject in itself, ”he said Steve SigmundDirector of Public Disclosure of Gateway Development Commission, the organization behind the Hudson tunnel project.
A transatlantic tunnel would be considerably longer.
The most popular dream of a transatlantic tunnel would be between London and New Yorkwhich would extend for about 5.500 km. For a tunnel of this dimension, “there would be several challenges”, explains Bill Grosespecialist in tunnels and member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Live Science.
The first challenge would be the logistics of building it. “It would have to resolve how to ventilate a tunnel like this, how to provide energy to a tunnel drilling machine, and how to take workers to the place,” says Gross.
O time that would take to transport workers from one end of the tunnel to the midpoint would be impracticable, said Gross, so the project would require a totally autonomous tunnel drilling machine – A device that still It was not invented on a scale that could excavate a underwater tunnel for human vehicles.
It would also have to take into account the Energy Requirements. For a tunnel of only 10 km long, a typical drilling machine requires about the same amount of energy consumed by a small townsays Gross.
Furthermore, Tunnel perforating machines are slow.
For a tunnel with the shorter distance through the Atlantic – from gambia to Brazil, about 2,575 km – “this probably It would take something like 500 years At the current speed of tunnel perforating machines, ”a Gross note.” It would take something that worked 50 times faster than current technology. “
There is also the Water pressure challenge. “You need to be very careful about the enormous pressure that exists, both in terms of digging the perforating machines in the tunnels themselves, but also… ensure that people are safe ”says Sigmund.
“And this is only 1.6 km through Hudson. Therefore, let us multiply this for a thousand, and we will come across some very serious problems-in projects of previous submarine tunnels, things like escapes, water gorls and collapses They led to financial losses and deaths, ”he adds.
O WORLD WATER PRESSURE RECORD faced by a tunnel drilling machine is 15 bar, or 15 times the atmospheric pressure At sea level, about 150 meters below the surface of the water.
In its deepest part, the Atlantic Ocean has But 8,000 m depth, which represents 800 pressure bar.
Finally, there is the problem of funding a project of such a great magnitude. “Construction, materials, time, labor, people to plan – These are the main pieces, ”says Sigmund, enumerating the factors that bring tunnel costs to astronomical values even in relatively small projects.
Given the enormous cost and catastrophic risk of a single escape, funding such a project would be almost impossible. “At this moment, I would say the challenges are insurmountable,” said Gross. “There are some things that still need to be invented”Before we can dream about a transatlantic tunnel.
