October 16, 2007 (LPAC)--Today, the second day of the Arctic Energy Summit Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, Mr. George Koumal, President of the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel and Rail Group (IBSTRG), responded to a question from EIR's Economics Editor, Marcia Baker, that the economy needs "something that matters" to hold itself up, and could collapse if overloaded with "please ourselves" kinds of activities. EIR had raised American statesman Lyndon LaRouche's longtime support for the Bering Strait project, and LaRouche's current attempt to prevent the world financial blowout from stopping necessary mega-projects like the Bering Strait Tunnel, and asked Mr. Koumal for his comments on prospects for financing it.

George Koumal's presentation was one of four simultaneous sessions scheduled for Tuesday morning. He described the history of the Bering Strait tunnel and railroad concept, and showed, with many graphics, why rail is the way to go for surface transportation. Russia is already building the railroad to Yakutsk, he said; $65 billion would do the job. The tunnel could be built in three-to-four years; in 12 years, everything could be built, including the railroad connectors. Koumal then outlined possible route options in North America.

Besides EIR's question, which referenced the fact that LaRouche had sent a paper to the April 24, 2007 IBSTRG conference in Moscow, and has backed the idea for decades, a youth asked how long it would take to build the whole World Link, from the tip of South America to the tip of Africa. Someone who had worked on the Chunnel said that project took five years from beginning to end, and that it worked fine, and that it was a more difficult undertaking. Koumal was asked about maglev trains, and said there should be maglevs in population-dense areas.

There were several other sessions led by Russian experts, which included a presentation on the Arctic Urals development, and centralized electricity plans to bring power to 94 population centers without such centralized electricity in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region in western Siberia.

Another Russian expert from Chukotka described the population drop in the province from 100,000 to 60,000, and current plans for improvement. There is a plan to place a floating nuclear plant in Chaun Bay, which will be the second one, after the first is placed in the European Arctic. The deadline is 2012, when the one existing nuclear plant in the province is scheduled to go out of operation.