Slashdot Mirror
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."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I say it holds for 6 years before it starts an earthquake that wipes itslef out and kills 10,000 people.
AS i recall, EVERYONE told them this was a bad idea.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Sure we have the hoover dam, which powers 3 states? Right? We know the oil supply is diminishing, and we will have to rely on either hydro or wind power within the next decade if we want to be able to go outside without suits to protect us from the thinning ozone layer.
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??? (rhetorical question, we all know the answer there)
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. And with hydro power on the scale that is talked about here, electricity would be at a super abundance. If you made a dam in Oklahoma say, you could power texas, arkansas, kansas, missouri, and perhaps even some states as far as colorado, with basically no problems at all. In case you haven't been to oklahoma, its full of rivers AND LOTS AND LOTS of open land where this sort of project would be VERY viable.
I wonder if any bank would lend me 25 billion dollars to build one? :)
Maybe, but you have got to realize how badly they need the power.
1.4 BILLION people. consider.
And do you really think it's possible to have China start to rely heavily on nuclear power, without the US getting nervous? Heck, the US is twitchy enough as it is.
So, yes, three-gorges is a beautiful place, but if this allows that many people to afford heat in the winter, or lights under which to read, so be it.
Otoh, I really think the current party do partly hope that the dam will turn out to be like the great-wall - legendary, etc. To that I go "huh?"
side-note: Tibet will get its natural gas deposit pumped next, probably...
last side-note: The one thing I thought that was kinda unfortunate is that three-gorges is purely a gravity dam, which might not be necessary considering that the place of the thing, after all, is a GORGE...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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.
As far as sources go, this is a forum not an academic paper. If you want a source, go ask google.
This is an environmental disaster in the making. Maybe 150-200 years later when the dam is all gone, all those villages and that lost ground will reappear.
Maybe he is making stuff up, maybe not.
Back when the Hoover Dam was built over-engineering was considered the best way of building, well almost anything.
You have to consider that it is the computer that has helped us under-engineer stuff.
When the Hoover dam was built you had little choice. If you tried to use the correct amount of concrete on the correct scale you might have gotten it wrong.
If you multiplied that number by a factor of 10 (consider the poster did say 1800 years, 180 years is 1/10th that) then you know that even if you did make a mistake somewhere you still wouldn't have a problem.
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.
Well, it's not like there wasn't history for the Hover then known as the Bolder Dam. The Anasazi people were known to dwell in that region. There is some speculation that the Anasazi were pretty impressive as far as their achievements go, but alas we thought it was a good idea to flood that area all but destroying that evidence.
Now typicaly i'm actually a fan of hydro power. It's better then chemical fuel because of that pesky issue of waste gases and having extract and bring in stuff to burn. It's better then nuclear because of the fact that it doesn't have the same issues with waste, and should let's say a dam fail, the area can be habitable soon after the water has washed away. You can't really say the same thing about nuclear. I would very much prefer china experiment with dam power rather then resorting to more toxic methods.
But it does have a sad side effect of reaking havic with fish and wildlife populations. And the lost of history is most tragic.
While I'm a big fan of what the Hover Land Reclamation project has done for america, I can not dismiss the negative impact that it has caused. You have regions like Phoenix and Los Angles who's enviroment doesn't naturally support humans, creating a dependence on these rivers that, in some cases, no longer flow into the sea. I'm not a fan of foolishness like in pheonix requring home owners to have a grass lawn visiable, which sorta increases demand on the water supply for something not really bloody useful.
But also i'm for the freedom of choice, and the inteligence of a people to weigh in the good and the bad. While I don't know the specifics, i'm willing to wager that these were taken into account. China has a population issue. Part of their immidate need is the ability to provide water, power, and food for these people. Dams can be great for this if properly managed. I'm sure they have issues with polution, dams are good for this too. Unforutnatly I feel that a dam is a good idea.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Yes instead of a renewable non-polluting energy source that can provide energy for %20 of the world let's just have them burn a bunch of coal and maybe makes some nuclear reactors, that's a lot better!
I'm sick of these racists critisizing the chinese when they actually try to produce clean power!
I bet you are out in American suburbs somewhere powered by either a giant coal plant or nuclear power.
Yes, let's have the chinese turn to nuclear power so that they don't anger any bourgeois western tourists!
Why don't you shut your hypocritical mouth.
...but what are they supposed to do?
... drawing fire from the same people who are criticising the environmental impact of the dam
Yes, this dam will damage the environment.
Yes, it will displace many people.
Yes, it is dangerous in terms of earthquakes and flooding if it collapses.
BUT, it is going to generate *18.2 MILLION kilowatts* of power, indefinitely, with no ongoing pollution. The alternatives are presumably:
- coal or oil power, causing a massive amount of greenhouse gas, contributing to global warming (yes it does exist, America) and drawing fire from the same people who are criticising the environmental impact of the dam
- 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
- China goes without power, and the western world continues to get fat and happy using our own dams, nuclear plants and coal fired power stations and sweet sweet Iraqi oil
Obviously the ideal solution would be for China to be able to build a project that produced this much power from solar/wind/tidal energy sources, but the cost at present would be insanely prohibitive. Quite frankly I have more respect for the energy policy of a nation that is trying to generate power without relying on fossil fuels and nuclear reactors than one that is actively trying to expand its power generation in those areas. Of course no other countries I can think of have built massive, environmentally questionable (*cough* Hoover *cough*) dams, have they?
Read Pynchon.
Except that dams aren't "cool" anymore. You can make an exception once in a while for a really well built and executed dam, like the Hoover dam. But for the most part dams are considered representative of an outmoded philosophy that the environment is something that should be "improved". We do still build dams in some cases, but we don't automatically equate their construction with "progress" anymore. (Same for swamps. We used to drain swamps as soon as we came across them- we don't do that anymore.)
That philosophy hasn't spread to China, where badmouthing this dam can get you arrested. It's politically untouchable. China is essentially throwing an adolescent temper tantrum and trying to convince the world that they're not a Third World nation by building the biggest, most destructive water project imaginable. You should see pictures of some of the areas they're flooding. It's as if we decided to flood the Grand Canyon to prove what badasses we are.
They're not only submerging archaeological sites. They're putting entire cities underwater. They're going to have to dynamite the tops of skyscrapers so that they don't sink the ships! Toxic waste dumps, landfills, it's all getting submerged. You are witnessing the creation of the largest open sewer that the world has ever seen. In fact this will be the first open sewer that astronauts will be able to see from space. This will be quite impressive. Not to mention the forced migration of a million people. Yeah, this isn't Third World behavior. "Technological prowess" speaks for itself!
They should have made the construction company housing below the dam and forced employees to live there for the next 10 years.
"The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into the tiger's den."
That's a load of shit, or you're not acquainted with the facts. 1.5 million people have been displaced and were not given a lot of money.
source: http://www.chinaonline.com/refer/ministry_profile
"Teachers leave us kids alone
China goes without power, and the western world continues to get fat and happy using our own dams, nuclear plants and coal fired power stations and sweet sweet Iraqi oil
China goes without power, and the western world continues to get fat and diseased using our own dams, nuclear plants and coal fired power stations and foul smelling Iraqi oil.
In some ways, the Chinese have the advantage of industrializing at a later date. For example, when people get phones there, they are much more likely to get wireless. They're skipping over the cumbersome copper phase of telecom to a large degree.
OTOH, they've failed to learn our lessons in other areas. I recall reading an article about how the once ubiquitous bicycle is being pushed out by cars. People who try to stay with their bikes are riding around in smog, finding it hard to breath, and of course they are dead meat in a collision now. Smog was a major point of contention in granting the Olympics to Beijing. Solution? Nearby industry will be shut down during the games.
It's too bad the government there is sold on this particular vision of "progress". If I were dictator, I'd tax cars and gasoline like crazy and use the revenue to build public transit. As for electricity, many Chinese did fine without it for most of history. If China wants to play a global game of "keeping up with the Joneses" they are free to do that, but it's just a larger scale version of the yuppie who knocks himself out 70 hours a week to keep the Mercedes and the crackerbox mansion, only to discover that his wife is sleeping around and his children don't respect him.
So what if 50% of the nation plows with oxen and washes clothes by hand? With appropriate and judicious distribution of resources, with effective management, with proper education, I daresay that people will live longer and more happily in such a nation.
Of course I doubt that there are very many nations with the wisdom to persue such a course, when the shiny, jingly "stuff" of industrialization is so tempting because... well... "everybody else is doing it". Maybe Africa still has a chance.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
>>The WTC was designed to withstand a hit from a 707, one of the largest planes around at the time. It was purposely hit by larger planes flying at maximum speed and chosen for their full fuel load. As for withstanding the impact, the towers did that remarkably well. The steel warping from the intense fires were what ultimately brought them down.
Not only that, but it's possible that if the second plane didn't hit, both towers could still be standing. I heard the tremors from the first tower's collapse could have triggered the second.
Another way to express it is six kilograms of energy every year.
It would be awe-inspiring to look at the power lines leaving the dam and realize they were carrying enough to (theoretically) synthesize a gram of antimatter every 3 hours. (Not 90 minutes, because you'd have to synthesize a gram of matter at the same time).
How short our (generally, on /.) American memories are. Here in California, how many remember that Hetch Hetchy Resevoir (San Francisco's water supply) flooded the second tranquil valley in Yosemite. Naturalist John Muir fought long, hard an unsuccessfully to prevent the damming of one of our nations grandest wonders.
"Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple," Muir would later write, "has ever been consecrated by the heart of man." From SacBee.com
Yosemite Valley is beautiful, but as I look down over the lake that drowned Hetch Hetchy, I wonder what that valley looked like before the flood.
-Sean
I guaren-damn-tee you that had there been any reasonable alternative to human-wave attacks at the time, that the Chinese generals would have been all over that.
But war is an ultimate expression of policy. You do whatever you have to do to win. You make use of whatever resources you have, no matter how unpleasent.
A Chinese-style human wave is not indicitive of a lack of regard for human life - it is instead an indicator of how badly they wanted to win.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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.
Gee, that's great. So where does the gas come from? If they had a large reserve of natural gas, don't you think they would've built gas-turbine plants instead of investing in this gigantic dam?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Hardly a troll here, people need to open their eyes, WTC 7 dropped straight down in a perfect demolition, even in the videos (I've seen 4 completely seperate views) the edges of the buildings don't even waiver a bit, it looks almost like the build is being erased from the sky it goes down so straight...
Because if it was a non-planned demolition, one portion of the building would have dropped first and not necessarily the whole building, and certainly not uniformily as it did.
The claim was that a huge diesil feul reserve exploded which brought the building down. Sorry, but explosive experts have proven you cannont cut steel support beams with an air explosion, it will never happen, the only way support beams could be cut with explosions is with explosives on direct contact with the supports...
Long story short, perhaps that building would have been messed up really, really bad, burnt to a crisp, partially collapsed, but no way, ever in a million years would a feul explosion drop a building like that...
How can this dam store as much water as Lake Superior? Superior is 350 miles long and 160 miles wide. The reservoir is about the same length but roughly one mile wide.
Superior averages 489 feet deep. The surface area is 7000 square miles. Meanwhile the reservoir has something like 400+ square miles of surface area.
Superior stores 440 trillion cubic feet of water while the reservoir is designed to store 1 trillion cubic feet 39.3 billion cubic meters.
There are 35 reservoirs in the world with storage capacities topping 30 billion cubic meters, and the Three Gorges Reservoir ranks 24th.
Superior it is not. And neither is the Washington Post.