First ship tunnel to be built under Norwegian mountains | Hacker News Reader

First ship tunnel to be built under Norwegian mountains

edition.cnn.com

42 pointsKaibeezy25 comments

There have been a few ship tunnels built already, the longest one is 7km long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rove_Tunnel

Maybe looking closer at the title it was a qualifier: first norwegian ship tunnel vs first ship tunnel.

The first line suggests not:

> Norway has got the go-ahead to construct what's being billed as the world's first ship tunnel, designed to help vessels navigate the treacherous Stadhavet Sea.

Which is odd because they don't seem too uncommon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_tunnel

This is the page with the coastal authorities [1] description:

"If the project is realized, the Stad Ship Tunnel would be the world's first full scale ship tunnel of this size."

So they call it the "first full scale ship tunnel of this size", so quite a few more qualifications.

[1] https://www.kystverket.no/en/About-Kystverket/Stad-Ship-Tunn...

Probably first "salt water" tunnel?

But looks like this one is closed down after it partially collapsed.

There had been many ship tunnels built in the UK a few hundred years ago, just before the invention of the railway. There were some surprisingly longes ones too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canal_tunnels_in_the_U...

Maybe the article is referring to tunnels on the sea?

Calling a canal boat a ship is a bit of stretch though.

That would cost $10B in the US and take 10+ years.

Big construction projects here, notably tunnels, nuke plants, military procurements, and manned-space programs, are treated as long-term corruption siphons, reliably delivering hundreds of $millions of graft per year, over as many years as the taxpayers will bear.

It seems a bit weird that the location of this tunnel would be in a very rural part of Norway and not very close to any large cities. Maybe it's just an anchorage where ships wait for a berth elsewhere?

One shudders to imagine the air quality in that tunnel... The ventilation system will likely be the most notable engineering feat of the project.

Norway has a lot of long car tunnels with extensive ventilation requirements, so I'm sure it's in hand.

The Norwegians are like the Doozers in Fraggle Rock - they will not be satisfied until the whole country is like a swiss cheese.

We once took a road trip to Bergen - after 10km in a tunnel, you turn left in an underground roundabout and suddenly see light. At the end of a tunnel is a steep cliff and you just drive directly onto a km long suspension bridge crossing the fjord.

Having driven the old road, and not even the oldest one (which was extremely winding through the mountain-side), I get why. First time I did as a child, we had to stay overnight and then drive in a column to get to the main tunnel at the time because of snow storms. In April.

The route from Oslo to Bergen has been an issue for centuries.

The country is already like a Swiss cheese! But the majority of the tunnels carry water, connecting various water reservoirs and hydroelectric power generators,, not traffic.

It looks quite high on visualizations, possibly standard ventilators like those in road tunnels, that just provoke airflow through tunnel will be sufficient. It's "just" 1,7km long.

Of course pollution will be high, but traffic low, compared to cars. It seems like something that may not require any new revolutionary systems, just old school solid engineering.

Norway has a lot of electric ferries, so it will not be as bad as you'd think.

https://plugboats.com/norway-leads-an-electric-ferry-revolut...

The wind difference between the ends of the tunnel likely provides pretty substantial ventilation. It also wouldn't be hard to just have a X-minute pause between ships to let the air clear out. Or they could just install ventilation. This is a non-issue.

I wonder how much Tidal/Wind driven flow there will be.

It's cute how they say it's for ferry service, when in reality the only reason this is being built is so Norway can export more oil to the rest of the world. That doesn't make for a very good press piece though, does it?

There's just no way the lack of this tunnel acts as a limiting factor on oil export.

Who said it did? Building the tunnel will improve their margins by reducing costs in the long-term though.

It's more then oil, it's money they get for that oil....

Will it? Official cost analysis doesn't seem to mention oil at all, unless I'm missing something. Presumably because oil tankers are a minor part of the travel on that stretch.

Instead they estimate the value of passenger transport, tourism, increased transfer of goods transport from roads, cost savings for the fishing industry and a few others.

Investment in the oil industry is not unpopular in Norway, so they'd have no reason to keep it out of the cost analysis.

EDIT: looking at the project docs, it looks like it also won't be able to take the larger oil tanker dimensions anyway. The upper size is picked to pretty much perfectly match the largest passenger ships on the route.

The tunnel is nowhere close to large enough for any oil tankers, and laden tankers have no problem passing Stad even in bad weather. It really is a project intended to improve safety for passenger and civilian vessels.

Why be postive when you can be negative though, right?

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