I'm not presently stuck in the Chunnel but have read of many, many people who were and it seems the root cause is an electrical failure caused by moisture! Train driven snow from the French side melted upon entering the tunnel which is pressurized with warm air resulting in failures.
"According to a Eurotunnel spokesperson, there was an excessive amount of "fluffy snow" in France and shields installed every winter to prevent snow build-up failed. The trains went from cold and snowy northern France into the relatively warm tunnel and the accumulated snow melted, shorting out the electrical systems. The combined temperature, snow type, and humidity in northern France and the tunnel were exceptional - that means untested in system testing terms - and so the trains failed."
The vulnerability of large systems was also brought to light in the failure last year of the Large Hadron Collider; the multi-billion dollar failure shortly after startup was probably the result of an electrical connector failure:
"A poor soldering job was the most likely cause of the failure that derailed the world's largest atom collider last month, a senior Cern scientist has said. Lyn Evans, project leader of the Large Hadron Collider at the European Nuclear Research Organization (Cern) outside Geneva, said the source problem was small. 'It happens quite often in electrical connections," Evans said, adding that he thought the fault resulted from human error on one electrical connection – one of 10,000 inside the machine.' "
Thermally Yours,
John
ASNT NDT Level III #48166
The Snell Group
www.thesnellgroup.com
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