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

I swear to god...

[craenor]

Thought that said Three Gorgeous Dames begin storing water...was like, wtf?

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.

Re:lamenating progress

[asparagus]

In addition, it creates a water pathway from 1500 miles inside of China to any place in the world. Chongking, the largest city in the world, is now a seaport!

-Brett

some notes

[customs]

it should be noted that the world bank, more specifically the international bank for reconstruction and development did not bank roll this project, because the human and environment costs were too great, even for them. this project was funded mainly by private contributions, lots of which are American, such as Morgan Stanley, just to name one.

This project will displace 1.9 Million people over the next year, including many unexplored aracaelogical sites in the canyon walls.

And lastly, it is believed that the amount of water being formed in the reservoir will be so great that it will put *a lot* of stress on the surrounding tectonic plates. So, casual earthquakes could become common.

But you know, anything in the name of progress...and socialism.

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.

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.

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

[lingqi]

wtf are you talking about. Besides huang-he (the other really long river in china), yangtze is one river that kills a lot of people and destroys many homes because it floods and changes courses constantly. since the ancient times, farmers that depended on it loved it (irrigation) and hated it (floods often) because of this.

Heck, I was in Nanjin (city with several million population) back when when it *almost* flodded. The water was some 10 meters higher than the ground near the port! damn good thing all the sandbags held, because otherwise a LOT of people would have died - myself probably one of them.

if I had to move because I'd be saving people's lives? well fuck, wouldn't you? 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? I am not personally familiar with that particular province, but in nanjin and shanghai, when farmers were kicked from their lands (when building new airport / new highway / mag-lev train / etc), the farmers got a LOT of cash for their land - in fact many of them are off to quite a good living, even better than some of the city-folks.

btw; most man-made channels silt. there are specific ships that dig those out. read about them. the technology is there. and don't forget that yangtze is a lot bigger than mississipi; so percentage-wise the silting should not be as bad.

btw; i mentioned it in another post but i say it again here - partly I think the government believes that this will become like the great-wall, etc, where they are creating a new legacy; at least thats what i think they thinks about when confronted with destroying the archeological stuff that lies the river's side.

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: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.

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.

lamenating the tourist mentality

[gad_zuki!]

>You would be surprised at just how much an affect of a beautiful environment can actually have on your life.

I fail to see the beauty of thousands killed annually by flooding and no real plans to power the world's largest country.

Sadly, many westerners like our above poster come off as so elitist they can easily be mistaken for racists. To them, it seems, the rest of the world is a potential tourist attraction and the natives better be "authentic" e.g. underfed, undereducated, sheoless, and surrounded by beauty. Well, enough beauty that'll fill up the card on your digital camera so you can view all this beauty on the plane ride home. Whatever happens to the natives is their problem, right?

The rest of the world is not a potential vacation, its an active and constantly changing place. Sure, the dam has criticisms just like anything else, but spare me your thesis on the beauty of the the environment and what seems to be bad news for your vacation plans.

>You would be surprised at just how much an affect of a beautiful environment can actually have on your life.

and overvaluing it to an absurd degree makes you sound a little crazy.

Re:lamenating the tourist mentality

[Rich0]

I agree. The historical site mentality is a false sense of logic. Every current historical site was almost certainly built on top of something older than it - ironcially enough the creation of these sites involved the destruction of something even more historical. If we were to bulldoze a 12th century home to put in a shopping mall you'd go through 100 years of legal battles. If you win and put in the mall, the irony is that 1000 years from now somebody is going to want to bulldoze the dilapidated mall to put in a 10,000 story skyscraper and everyone will be arguing about the destruction of an authentic 2003 marketplace.

That isn't to say that we should just be bulldozing archaeological sites wholesale. Nevertheless there isn't any reason that you can't just give the archaeologists six months to take whatever they want out of there and take lots of pictures and then bulldoze the whole thing.

If we didn't tear down old stuff to build new stuff eventually the entire planet would be uninhabitable. It would be one big museam with "DO NOT TOUCH" written all over it.

If they SO BADLY needed the power ...

[Taco Cowboy]

Maybe, but you have got to realize how badly they need the power.

If they so badly needed that power, then they SHOULD construct the dam PROPERLY.

The dam was constructed with not only shabby methods, but also with inferior-grade materials.

My friend works for an international construction firm that has consultation contract with the Chinese on that project, and he told me years ago that the dam would last 30 years.

I thought he was joking then, but now I know he wasn't.

The report of CRACKS, HUNDREDS of them, have appeared, and many of them are as wide as 1.3 METERS !

Now the Chinese are worried, but it's all too late!

The official press is putting up BOLD FACE EXCUSES telling the world that the cracks are of NON-CONSEQUENCIAL! They keep on repeating the PARTY-LINE that "THE DAM IS CONSTRUCTED TO WITHSTAND AN EARTHQUAKE IN THE MAGNITUDE OF 7" and the worse part of the whole LIE is that the theory of "withstanding earthquake" was NEVER tested in term of the dam construction. Plus, that assumption is based on a PROPER construction with NONE of the inferior materials that have been used.

For example, instead of using concrete that has been designed to withstand tremendous power, inferior concrete was used. Instead of using the concrete that can STRETCH and FLEX so that it won't break, much cheaper rigid and fragile concrete was used.

According to my friend, the former Chinese Premier, Zhu Yongi tried to intervene on the matter, when he learned of the dishonest practices, but he was VETOED by his CCP comrades in the politburo. Both Li Peng and Jiang Zemin prevented Zhu from taking any action, because both Li and Jiang were (and are) on the take.

So there was NO WONDER in Zhu's departing speech late last year, that he reminded the world to see him as an honest politician that did not tolerate any corruption. That remark was designed specifically to distance himself from the likes of Li Peng and Jiang Zemin, in case hyper-projects like the Three Gorges Dam breaks.

If the dam breaks, tens of millions of people will die, and they will die because of Jiang Zemin and .