Three Gorges Dam Begins Storing Water

Anonymous Coward writes "The Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric project in the world, and one of the largest engineering projects underway right now, has begun accumulating water in the reservoir."

Comments

And so we mourn

[metalhed77]

As many historical sites dating hundreds, even thousands of years old are washed underneath, and even more tragically, the beautiful vista of the three gorges is irrevocably marred by the claws of "progress".

Re:And so we mourn

[cioxx]

it's not the historical sites, as much as it hurts the ecology as a whole. People don't realize that diverting massive streams of water to create artificial dums in places not intended by nature could have catastrophic results.

I direct you to study the history of Aral sea, which was the biggest man-made clusterfuck in USSR history aside from the obvious.

more than thirteen thousand hectares of fertile soils were flooded by the Toktogul Reservoir. In addition to constricting the downstream water supply to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and eventually to the Aral, the dam destroyed the fragile ecological balance within the region and the once beautiful area surrounding the reservoir was transformed into a desert

...
There is much more

And to put this into perspective, it was such a small sea but had so much impact on surrounding areas as a result of artificially invoked desiccation.

Disaster looming?

[mosch]

Let's just hope this one works out better than the Gouhou dam did. It's my understanding that there are longstanding questions about the build quality, and that there have already been problems with cracks appearing in the dam.

Re:WHo wants to start the pool?

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

I give it less.

From:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto ry&cid=57 0&e=6&u=/nm/china_dam_dc

The project also has been plagued over the past decade by corruption and discovery of hundreds of cracks in the dam, though the Guangzhou Daily on Sunday quoted officials as saying the cracks, some tens of yards long, were not a danger.

link to Dam story

[handy_vandal]

Correct link here

As Stupid as Aswan

[bstadil]

This is as stupid as building the Aswan dam.

Destroyed irreplacable historic artifacts in exchange for more Farmland. Farmland, for crying out loud. As if the world need more Farmland.

We need educated people not bloody peasants.

Why do undeveloped nations think they need big ill thought throught project like this. Free the people and let them do the thinking and drive the economy.

Curious about the Aswan flop

Quote:

Aswan Dam was unwise. The project was far more expensive than expected. Further, the annual floods carried silt, which created the topsoil needed for plants. Since the creation of the Aswan Dam, the farms on the formerly flooded banks have had to use expensive fertilizers in place of the silt. Formerly, fish have fed on the silt, and the people downstream depended on fishing from the riverhere

Re:As Stupid as Aswan

[The Master Control P]

In short, the problem isn't food production, it's food distribution. There is PLENTY food to feed every single person in the world right now. It's just that most of them don't have enough money to buy it, and that the countries with a major surplus (The US exports > half it's corn) aren't willing to forgo enough profits to at least prevent people from starving to death.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the Proletariat sieze the means of production. Just that enough food be given away, in addition to paid exports, to make sure that people at least get a basic diet.

In addition to this, the most crucial thing is EDUCATION. Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day; Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime. Teach people modern farming methods, give them the necessary equipment, and you'll suddenly see that no one is starving anymore.

Boy, that sucks.

[twiztidlojik]

After relocating people from their kinda-nice homes to concrete grottos (it was on the Discovery special a few years ago) and losing their livelyhood, don't you think a million Chinese would get a little pissed off? Aside from the historical, economic, and environmental damage this will cause, what prevents this new lake from silting up (you do recall the Yangtze has about as much silt as the Mississippi) as soon as the dam is "turned on", so to speak? Will they have to dredge it every few weeks? How do other dam engineers prevent silting?

The Chinese government really should put a bit of importance onto Chinese history. After all, how can they point to their "glorious history" if they've destroyed all the evidence?

Just to put the reservoir in perspective

[romec]

This is 7 times the size of Washington DC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2953420.s tm)

Going to the handy dandy CIA fact book(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ fields/2023.html)that is
A little larger than Hong Kong
Twice the size of Bahrain
Twice the size of Singapore

Re:No offense to the chineese but

[abbamouse]

The Three Gorges Dam is a disaster. Frankly, even the Hoover Dam isn't all roses. Large dam projects flood huge areas of land, eliminating entire ecosystems, displacing large numbers of people, destroying archaeological evidence, and submerging economically productive land. There's something to hate for everyone, whether liberal or conservative. Check out the ecology of the Colorado River sometime. Interestingly, the things can even increase CO2 concentrations by flooding green areas. The effect can be quite substantial.

There are also practical difficulties, like the buildup of silt (which always seems to happen much faster than anyone anticipates) and the costs of construction and maintenance (they aren't as cheap as one might expect).

Are they better than fossil fuel plants? Probably. Personally, I like them a lot more than nuclear plants (largely for economic reasons). But I just can't find it in me to be happy about their construction.

A quick and dirty summary of the downside of dams can be found here, though a quick Google search will reveal many more pages for and against.

Hoover dam will stand 1800 years!

[3770]

I visited the Hoover Dam and they said that the life expectancy for it was about 1800 years and they said it was considered being hugely over engineered.

Also, apparently the concrete in the middle hasn't quite finished baking yet so it is still emitting a lot of heat.

It is also interesting that Las Vegas only gets about 4% of its power from the Hoover dam, which is interesting since it is so close to the dam. It turns out that when they built the dam they wrote long term contracts for who would get the electricity. The officials of Las Vegas thought they got their share, it was just that they had no idea that Las Vegas would grow so fast.

Re:Hoover dam will stand 1800 years!

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Look at the difference between old time skyscrapers (Empire State) and new ones (not a completley fair comparison, but the World Trade Center). The Empire State building has taken at least 2 plane hits during its lifespan.

Once during WWII with a twin engine bomber.

That's an unfair comparison (and a little more than "not a completley fair"). The WWII bomber is smaller than a 757, would have been moving at a slower speed, and wouldn't have been carrying as much fuel. Don't forget, it was the fire that caused it to collapse.

Re:Hoover dam will stand 1800 years!

[MillionthMonkey]

No, the concrete in the interior of Hoover is not done curing, and it will not finish curing until sometime in the middle of this century. The curing time was calculated when they built the dam and the heat buildup was foreseen to be a problem. It structurally weakens the dam and may even cause failure.

They fixed it by laying metal radiator tubes through the concrete at regular intervals. The dam is essentially a giant concrete radiator. They run water through those tubes, and it carries away the heat from deep within the mass of concrete. The dam's temperature is fairly easy to regulate this way.

The rumor you hear sometimes of workers being buried in the concrete as they died is just an urban legend. People did die building Hoover dam, but the builders of the dam would never have allowed a human body to be buried in the concrete. That would have introduced structural weaknesses in the dam.

as big as lake superior

[goombah99]

the washington post has a better article.

The dam will ultimately be able to crank out 18,200 megawatts of energy a year, the equivalent of 26 nuclear power plants or 10 big coal-fired power stations burning 50 million tons of coal.

or about 36 watts per person! China better invest in transmeta or low power dragon cpus if they ever want to make computers ubiquitous. However because of falling energy prices in china, its unlikely the overrun cost of this damn will be recouped quickly, making future investments in energy production in doubt.

With as much water as Lake Superior, the reservoir will stretch 385 miles east to west and more than one mile north to south and 600 feet deep. unlike lake superior all of this water is held back from a lower flood plain by a single entity--the dam. THis could be a spectacular flood if it breeched.

but there's reason to worry. small cracks are appearing in the damn and construction officials arrested for corruption. 60 percent of the waste entering the reservoir comes from sources that can't be treated, such as fields laden with fertilizer and insecticide. Of the 90 tributaries entering the reservoir, 60 are now considered heavily polluted. It may well become a cesspool the size of lake superior.

One might also worry how this will shift the eco system and farmland down stream. THe river has traditionally created havoc with its floods but presumably also renewed farmlands and sustained eco systems down stream.

Dam collapses killed 220,000 in China in the 70s

[TheNarrator]

It's a little known fact that in the 1970s a dam project in Henan Province of China was responsible for the deaths of more than 200,000 people. This was in fact the biggest technological diaster of all time. Here's some more information about this and other dam collapses.

Re:lamenating progress

[metalhed77]

Someone allready pointed out that it won't make much power. What also should be noted is that the main purpose of the dam, controlling water for souther farmland, is highly criticized. Whether or not it will actually be economically justified (lets not forget that it dislocated quite a few people (over a hundred thousand I believe).

Re:A Nice Target

[Moridineas]

Anyone want to wipe out the lower half of China has now been given a perfect missle target. Although much ignored by Western media, note that China also faces Uygurs terrorist (otherwised called "freedom fighters" by Western media) threats connected with al Quaeda in the XinJiang Province.

Fact: Some Uyghurs have been implicated in bomb attacks (I don't believe any attacks took place outside of Xinjiang).

Fact: The Communist Chinese government has forcibly moved millions of Han Chinese into Xinjiang over the past 50 years in an attempt to pacify the Uyghur population.

Fact: The Uyghurs are neither Han nor Chinese--they are ethnically Turkish, look different from the Chinese, and speak a language that is mutually intelligible (with difficulty) with the language of Turkey. Before they were conquered by China over 50 years ago they were an independent nation. It is true that this area had been under MARGINAL Chinese control off and on for centuries (there were 42 results under Manchu rule for instance). As a side note, this area has oil. Coincidence that China cares about it?

Fact: The Chinese have not had the best track record dealing with minorities or hunman rights in general (Inner Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkestan, etc etc).

Fact: AFAIK (and AFAAK) the rumored links to al-Qaeda are just that--rumors. Until proven otherwise, they are as insubstantial as links of Saddam to al-Qaeda.

So in conclusion, this is simply another minority group (again, see Inner Mongolia and Tibet for the other two most publicized examples) that is being horribly treated in China--and no one cares because of business opportunities...

i am chinese and i am pretty impressed

[lingqi]

erm...
1/3 of power requirements in china is, ahem, what, insignificant in your book? what do you propose they do? buy hamster mills? connect all the population into a computer simulation and harvest bioelectricity? (actually, in hind sight - the harvesting bioelectricity thing might make a good movie)

you'd be surprised how much infrastructure stuff is going on in china right now. highways are beginning to connect most metropolitan areas to one another, new airports are springing into existance (ever compare the new shanghai airport (pudong) with the old (hongqiao)?

Since the dam holds so much potential in the roadblock to china's industrial and economical future (seriously - power-outages are worse there than CA) - I wouldn't call it an "show of pride." That kind of stuff would be probably be exemplified by the maglev rail in shanghai.

Now, being somewhat earthquake-prone is (i think) one of the reasons why they built a gravity dam; it's blocking water just by its weight. I am concerned about the quality of the build - but that is different from concern about the intention to build it. There are no plausible alternatives currently, you see. Besides, if Japan's nuclear powerplant can survive through the recent (last week) 7.0 earthquake, I'd think the technology is there to keep a dam steady.

Re:i am chinese and i am pretty impressed

[Kaiwen]

1/3 of power requirements in china is, ahem, what, insignificant in your book?

Because no one can predict with any certainty what China's energy needs will be ten to twenty years out, any predictions of this sort are guesswork at best -- pure marketing at worst. The fact is, over the last decade power availability throughout the area to be served by the Three Gorges dam has consistently outstripped demand, meaning there is currently a power glut. This may well change in the future, but no one can say for sure.

I had a final chance to visit the Three Gorges last August, with a tour guide who was an unabashed mouthpiece for government propaganda. Coincidentally, there was a Canadian hydro-electric engineer in our group who had worked on dam projects around the world. He asked some very pointed questions, making the tour guide very uncomfortable.

One of the biggest potential problems with the dam project is silting. All dams eventually silt up -- all the detritus normally washed down river kept afloat by the currents settles out as the currents slow, eventually building up behind dams and other obstructions, rendering all dams eventually unusable.

The Three Gorges dam is different only in the unprecendented scale of the problem. The fact that the Yangtze is both one of the largest and one of the most silt-heavy rivers in the world makes conventional de- and anti-silting methodologies utterly inadequate and makes the the success of the project heavily dependent on experimental and largely untested (Gezhouba Dam notwithstanding) methods. Should these methods fail to perform as projected, the dam -- more than twenty years in the making -- could silt in in as little as ten years, making it one of the most costly debacles in human history.

Amazingly, the project has not even attempted to address the other silting problem. As the mighty Yangtze rushes into the upper end of the reservoir near Baidicheng -- 360 miles southwest of the Dam -- the sudden slowing will deposit by some estimates thousands of tons of silt per day, eventually resulting in massive flooding problems along the entire riverway from Chongqing to Yunyang.

There are no plausible alternatives currently, you see.

This is simply not true. In the years since the Three Gorges project was begun any number of alternative technologies have appeared. Gas-fueled combined cycle plants and co-generators, for example, produce virtually no pollution or greenhouse gases, are smaller, safer, cheaper, more reliable, less sociologically or environmentally disruptive, and more adaptable -- meaning they can be constructed relatively quickly to meet demand and can be located near the need. This last point is not insignificant, as transmission leakage will consume a large percentage of the power generated by the dam. By some estimates, transmission losses from the dam to Beijing could run as high as 70%. As natural gas becomes more prevelant, combined cycle plants will become even more economically attractive.

Which leads to the next problem: the project is already facing severe financial difficulties. Nearly every original investor has fled, and the few that haven't already pulled out are in the process of doing so, leaving the government to foot nearly the entire bill. While Beijing has attempted to put a bright face on this, the fact remains that few investors expect the dam will ever turn a profit, both because of the immense (and growing) construction costs -- not helped by the massive corruption which has dogged the project -- and because newer, cheaper alternatives threaten to undercut the dam's market before construction is even completed. The fact is, hydro-electric dams are outdated both technologically and economically.

Most of the sociological impact of the dam will takes years to manifest. To date, the government has relocated less than half the two million people who are being displaced. Our tour guide gushed with pride as he showed us the shin

Re:i am chinese and i am pretty impressed

[Graymalkin]

Uh, there's a few plausible alternatives. The money could have been better spent on constructing more energy efficient buildings for homes and businesses. It also could have gone into building localized power generation using solar, geothermal, wind, and small scale hydroelectric plants. Energy efficient housing goes a tremendous way in reducing the amount of power any urban area needs to maintain itself. Energy efficient policies and buildings in businesses also help out a great deal in reducing peak power demands off the utility grid. If efficient buildings and renewable electricity and heating sources are utilized the net effect is extremely low levels of pollution for equivilent levels of comfort as dirty inefficient systems.

The dam is going to devastate the local ecology to a degree not seen since the Aral Sea debacle. Most of the rivers feeding the Three Gorges are heavily polluted and hundreds of factories are being flooded by the dam. Despite cleanup efforts it is inevitable that hazardous industrial chemicals are going to end up floating about in the reservoir. Add the industrial waste to that created by the ocean frieghters navigating the new reservoir and you've got a gigantic cesspool in the middle of the country.

Besides the pollution the local wildlife is going to end up wiped out. Without the silt in the river being distributed down its bed the fish will have nothing to eat if the pollution doesn't kill them first. The Baiji dolphin is also on the list of animals to be impacted as they hunt through the river's silt for food as well. Water fowl that feed on the fish that won't be there will also begin to die off unless they manage some heavy migration. Even if they manage to find new food sources their numbers are going to dwindle drastically. Worst is the people in the area that depend heavily on the river's fish stock. They're going to have a signifigant food source closed off to them which means more food imports to the area which will only exacerbate the poullution problems.

Of course there's the potential for a massive flood. The dam is already showing signs of wear. Saying the dam is earthquake resistant in a misnomer. Natural earthquakes pose less of a problem than the masses of water in the reservoir putting pressure on the local tectonic system. Also the massive build-up of silt in the reservoir is a distaster waiting to happen. A small earthquake that normally wouldn't damage the dam stands a decent chance of causing a mudslide in the silt bed. Megatons of silt crashing to the basin floor will cause pressure waves that can seriously damage the dam.

A number of proposals and arguments are on the books and the project was started despite them. Most proposals suggested a smaller number of power stations could be built on the Yuangtze's tributaries. They could have provided as much power as the single dam without the ecological damage and vast potential for a catastrophic flood. The lakes and wetlands downstream from the Three Gorges area also are able to hold more water than the reservoir but allow but better distribution of the water.

The dam is most definitely a political show of pride than it is a practical solution to a problem. Save for ocean freight in Chongquin the alternative solutions to the TGD provided everything the TGD did for a lower cost and less economic and ecological impact. It is arguable that Chongquin NEEDS the ocean freight, it is polluted and choked as it is, adding to those facts is not a very good idea. The corruption brought to light in the project of late and the total silencing of opposition to the project should tell you this whole plan is nothing more than the world's biggest political stunt.

Re:i am chinese and i am pretty impressed

[Graymalkin]

I'm not a riverologist but my understanding is between the Yangtze's tributaries and itself it is one of the siltier rivers in the world. The high silt content of the river is what makes the Three Gorges region a good farming local, regular floods of the river replenish the soil in the area. It is local farming and development which has made the region such a danger to live in. Industrial and residential buildup on the shores of a river that regularly floods is a stupid idea and reflects some of the more inane central planning policies in the Chinese government.

Left to its own devices the reservoir will silt over within a few short years according to some engineers. Even if it is regularly dredged it is predicted the silt buildup in the turbines is going to cause regular downtime which means huge swaths of developed area will go without power or heavy reductions in residential power to keep industrial districts fed. If the spillways fill up with silt which many people agree is very likely, serious stress problems could crop up.

Like you mention about Florida, regions downstream from the TGD are facing a slew of environmental guesses as to the total effect of the dam. Not only will downstream inland areas be greatly affected but so will regions framing the South China Sea which is fed by the Yangtze. Over a number of years it is not infeasible to imagine large sections of the coastline receding. Tell will tell I suppose.

Re:There is a hell of a lot of criticism of China.

[TummyX]

nuclear power, leading to large amounts of nuclear waste and with an increased risk of a meltdown occurring in a 2nd/3rd world country with dubious safety records and high levels of corruption ... drawing fire from the same people who are criticising the environmental impact of the dam


The nuclear waste gets buried and when was the lsat time you saw a meltdown?

And what kind of impact do you think the dam bursting would have hmmm!? The dam (to me) looks far more dangerous than a few nuclear power stations. Containing a nuclear disaster is nothing compared to containing all that water.

Power or Flood Prevention?

[tlhp514]

One of the big, still mostly unanswered questions about the dam is whether the principal goal is to generate power or to reduce the risk of catastrophic floods. The Chinese government says that they intend to do both. However, often these two objectives clash - you are inclined to take more risks in order to generate more power. Also, in either case there are better alternatives. If you want power, it is cheeper to just build a bunch of nuclear plants. If you want flood prevention, a large series of smaller projects on tributaries would be more effective, would avoid the catastrophic risk, and would have a smaller environmental, social, and cultural impact. The only conclusion one can draw from this is that the CCP wants this because it will be impressive in traditional Chinese "big projects" style. This is probably also a large part of the motivation for their space program. They want desperatly to see themselves as a great modern power. The history of this goes back to the building of the Great Walls (there were several, built at different times) and massive flood prevention projects which often were the basis for the legitimacy of an emperor/dynasty.

Re:There is a hell of a lot of criticism of China.

[caitsith01]

My mistake:

"The fuel elements ruptured and the resultant explosive force of steam lifted off the cover plate of the reactor, releasing fission products to the atmosphere. A second explosion threw out fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the core and allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames."

No need to panic, not a meltdown! Everyone return to your stations...

Re:No offense to the chineese but

[oarsman17]

I'm unsure if you're being facetious or not, but firstly the Hoover Dam principally serves power to a majority of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and powers a rather small stake in Nevada and in Arizona (article). Secondly, the ecological costs incurred when erecting some dams exceed the benefits of providing the power.

You know, I drive around on a golf cart every day, and it goes a good 20mph and requires minimal charging. I wouldn't mind in the least bit switching over to an electric car providing it would be cheap to recharge

Battery-powered automobiles are incredibly inefficient (avg. range: 90 miles) and the energy sources that would power such automobiles output as much CO2 as an appropriate number of internal-combustion automobiles (sorry I don't have enough time to corroborate the findings I've read from /. and other sources). You'd be paying as much or more to recharge that battery-powered car compared to what you're paying to refuel your internal-combustion-powered car. (Again, google for the info or go to the library to inform yourself about these things.) Golf carts, mind you, probably weigh one-eighth the weight of an average automobile, so indeed they travel a long range because they are light in weight! Driving battery-powered hatchbacks for short-range trips in a bustling metropolis may be more beneficial than driving the comparable gas-powered hatchback, but I'll leave that to another discussion.

Take Oklahoma for example... TONS of rivers and lots of space where you could easily and very cheaply recreate another hoover dam. WHY DOESN'T THIS HAPPEN???

If I'm not mistaken, Oklahoma is not incredibly rugged (mountainous). If you wanted to produce as much energy that is produced from the Hoover Dam turbines, then you'd need enough an immense volume of water to flow at an appreciable velocity to achieve such energy, thus an immense amount of land would be consumed in Oklahoma to achieve such power and would damage the ecosystems of the Red River and the Arkansas River, if they aren't doing so now. Take the Missouri River, for instance, where the dams that have been erected along the river have decimated the total fish populations that were once ubiquitous in the Missouri.

Read up on the benefits and costs of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The vehicles may be environmentally sound, but the means to power the vehicles end up failing to reduce greenhouse gases, at this moment (if only fusion power were implementable). Same thing goes with battery-powered vehicles (cars, not golf carts.)

As for the Three Gorges Dam, it is an environmental, anthropological, and economical disaster unfolding before our eyes. I trust the majority of posts that have been or will be posted reflect what I would like to mention in this post, and indeed this post is grossly offtopic, but someone needs to inform those who may not wholly understand the totality of internal-combustion, battery-powered, and fuel-cell vehicles and the totality of all energy sources.
</two_cents>

Re:lamenating progress

[asparagus]

With 30-35 million people, Chongqing is the largest municipality in the world. Most people have never heard of it.

-Brett

Re:There is a hell of a lot of criticism of China.

[saitoh]

I did my term paper in my History of Modern China class this past semester and presented the findings at our university's (UMPI) annual conference during a session. As such, I'll respond and try and clear up a few things from what I found:

Coal power isn't an option if your looking at the environment. Chungqing which will now be a seaport has smog that makes LA look pristine... Its the industrial center of that section of China and holds 31 million people (to put it in perspective New York City only has 8 million during the 2000 census as per the New York City Department of Planning has on their website). So much so that there are reports that people who have asthma and journey there are expected to (and have) died within 4-6 weeks.

I honestly don't know about the nuclear power. That was outside the scope of my search so I can only estimate that yeah, there would be a buttload of nuclear waste.

I will say this though, with a body of water that is this large (long, not wide) that the salinity of the water will increase (as is found in other large bodies of water and other dam projects), as such, with this stretching long periods, the watershed is also expected to become saltier and the plant-matter close to the water is also expected to suffer.

These are only the negatives, downstream where there are large amounts of citrus fruit and the "bread basket" of China is located (presumed to be the second largest until the Taiping Rebellion) will now have stabilized flow of the Yangtze River instead of the traditional seasonal changes of approximately 30 meters in depth.

China isn't *controlled* by the communist party, its controlled by the rivers. Rivers in China change course often, and when they do, approximately 1.2 million people die each year due to either flooding or starvation with a poor crop (figure obtained from in class lecture, will find an online source if asked). China lives "on the edge" of starvation constantly with only 12% of their land being arable, so when a river moves, its BIG NEWS. This will be the first time that many farmers downstream are able to install permanent irigation.

- Page

Re:lamenating progress

[DoraLives]

largest municipality

Be glad you don't live there. From the link: The city currently lacks a wastewater collection and disposal system; virtually all domestic and industrial wastewater discharges through some 600 random discharge points into the two rivers, which run through the city. Since these two rivers are the source of the city's drinking water, the lack of wastewater management facilities gives rise to a daily risk to public health.

Phew. No thanks.

wind power doesn't kill many birds

[js7a]

the blades are extremely fast and kills a lot of birds in the area

On the contrary, that idea is generally a myth.

Re:There is a hell of a lot of criticism of China.

[thynk]

The fuel elements ruptured and the resultant explosive force of steam lifted off the cover plate of the reactor, releasing fission products to the atmosphere. A second explosion threw out fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the core and allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames."

If I read my sources then the Chernobyl accident was the worst in the history of nuclear power, in fact it KILLED 10 TIMES the previos record holder of 3 deaths. Yes, 30 people died at the site. Another 10 have found to have thyroid cancer and have died. "An authoritative UN report in 2000 confirmed that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed"
AND - if could of been avoided completely.

Not the biggest deal in the world... but since the conversation was here I thought I'd stick my nose in. Looks like for acciendent related deaths, Nukes are pretty damn safe, thus far anyway.

Tell you what, save a few lives and a ton of cash. Don't bother building your damn on one coast and your nuke plant on the other - next time both of you meet in the middle (Colorado) - I'll buy you both a beer.

Re:WHo wants to start the pool?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we have instituted the Endangered Species List what percentage of the species we have put on that list have been taken off that list as being 'No longer in danger of extinction'.

Sure thing, Mr Can't Use Google

Now go and plant a tree to say sorry. Even if you don't think it'll save a species, you'll have a much nicer local enviroment as a result (Trees are a great place to have a barbeque under)

Re:lamenating progress

[bastion_xx]

So when do we flood the Grand Canyon?

Probably once we've flooded some of the uptream portions, like the Glenn River Canyon, errr, Lake Powell?