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

No offense to the chineese but

[Rooked_One]

Why are they ahead of us in any way?

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? :)

Re:No offense to the chineese but

[asparagus]

Well, you may be pro-dam, but the hard-line enviromentalists are against dams for ecosystem reasons. From a politican's standpoint, if you don't have their support, there's little point supporting building them because they'll still attack you come election time for destroying the enviroment.

That being said, I'm glad got the chance to visit the Three Gorges before they destroy them.

This thing is big. Really big.

-Brett

Re:No offense to the chineese but

[anagama]

There is a lot of opposition to damns in Pacific Northwest where I live (salmon habitat). It's hard to say this without sounding republican (which I most definetely am not), but people must realize that having energy requires trade-offs. I'm not saying damns are absolutely better than coal/gas/oil fired energy plants, but it seems fairly intuitive that the overall negative effects of damns on the environment at the worldwide scale, is far far less than that created by combustion. Plainly, local impacts are more severe with damns, but it seems this places the environmental burden on the users of the power, whereas with combustion, the costs are spread to non-users. In a sense, damns seem a more fair way to distribute the costs associated with power production. With combustion, neighbors who do not share the benefits of the power generated, still share the detriments of the pollution generated.

I'm currious if anyone knows of studies which look at power generation costs from a global, as opposed to local, perspective. For example, even with damns, I could forsee global impacts that would effect others not benefitted by the power, e.g., fewer salmon mean less seal food and thus, fewer seals. Cultures reliant on seals for whatever reason, may be unfairly burdened with the costs of power generation.

This obviously doesn't address the archeological destruction caused by the Three Gorges Damn - significant archeological evidence should be considered a world heritage asset, and be taken into consideration when constructing a damn.

lamenating progress

[lingqi]

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...

Re:lamenating progress

[junkgrep]

The amount of power this will generate wont even remotely cover what China needs as far as their long term energy plans. This project has been a party glurge for decades: it was announced by the party to be a big demonstration of China's industrial might, and it's more of point of desperate pride-at-all-costs than a wise infastructure decision. The silliest thing is that no one, not even people in China, are really all that impressed by it. It's not exactly a truly groundbreaking feat of engineering: all it is is an ambitious scope. And it may well turn out to be a very, very dumb idea in a region that has huge earthquakes not so infrequently.

A Nice Target

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What?

[mosch]

Actually I was thinking of the wrong thing when I mentioned the Gouhou dam collapse, which killed a couple hundred people. The collapse of the banqiao and shimantan dams were far more destructive, killing between 80,000 and 250,000 people.

As far as sources go, this is a forum not an academic paper. If you want a source, go ask google.

Re:Hoover dam will stand 1800 years!

[sllim]

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.

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

[caitsith01]

...but what are they supposed to do?

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 ... drawing fire from the same people who are criticising the environmental impact of the dam

- 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?

Re:construction standards aren't that great

[Strudelkugel]

I've read not too encouraging things about the construction of the dam. Guess I would much rather be one of the people displaced upstream of the thing than live downstream after the water fills in the reservoir. I also read that the weight of the water will likely cause earthquakes. One H*** of an experiment they are running...

Re:repeat after me: it's a Good Thing(tm)

[Nept]

Btw, did you know that when shit like this happens (government forces you to move), they pay you a whole lot of money, at least in chinese standards?

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.

Resettlement: In the 1980s, China passed regulations to protect the rights of those displaced by the dam projects and assure them of adequate compensation. But human rights activists asserted that rural dwellers are being discriminated, that they are not being consulted about their eviction, that they are often crowded onto poor land with unsatisfactory living conditions and few job opportunities, that they are not being taught new job skills, that corruption is diverting the funds meant to compensate them, that their local culture is threatened and that the government has provided no channels for them to express dissatisfaction

source: http://www.chinaonline.com/refer/ministry_profiles /threegorgesdam.asp

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

[istartedi]

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.

E=mc**2

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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).

Re:i am chinese and i am pretty impressed

[smithmc]

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?