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Yangtze Dam Opens

May 25th 2006 02:37
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It took 13 years and an official average cost of almost 2 billion US dollars per year of construction, however, last week the Three Gorges Dam was finally open. Unofficially, the total cost is estimated as high as 75 US dollars. The dam is a modern marvel and engineering phenomenon. It is the world’s largest hydroelectric dam and encompasses Asia’s greatest river. The technical specifications are mind blowing. The dam wall is 185 metres tall and constructed of concrete 15 metres thick. The dam wall stretches a total length of almost 2.5 kilometres. The dam is currently capable of delivering 49.1 billion kilowatts per hour. It is projected that by 2011 the dam will be delivering in excess of 100 billion kilowatts per hour. The entire dam has an estimated capacity of 39 billion cubic metres.


With a looming global energy crisis and the economical boom of China in recent years, the completion of the Three Gorges Dam will make a significant contribution to the future energy needs of this growing society. 52% of the power generated by the Dam is to go to the Central China region, 32% is distributed the eastern China and the remaining 16% is to serve the energy needs of the Guangdong province. There have been costs with the taming of the Yangtze. Over 1.3 million people have been displaced by the development of the dam. Land areas occupied by a total of 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,300 cities are now completely submerged. Furthermore, an immeasurable number of archaeological treasures have or will be submerged by the flooding of the dam. The potential ecological effects of a man made dam can be extreme and costly to repair. Australian need only reflect on the impact the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric development has had on the Murray River and the chain reaction effects experienced further up the line.


On the other hand, the power generated is much needed to ensure the stability of the growing Chinese economy and bolster development in Central China. The energy requirements of China have been a sticking point for the Hu Jintao government which won popular by promising to increase living standards in China’s poor Central and Western regions. Other projected benefits of taming the Yangtze are the control of annual flooding which has been a continual problem for the local communities and farmers. 300,000 lives were lost over the last century as a result of Yangtze flooding. It is believed the dam will protect 1.5 million hectares of farmland and save hundreds of millions of agricultural dollars which are usually affected by the summer rains of the region.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at some of the projected ecological issues of the Three Gorges Dam as investigated by Fan Xiao a Chinese geologist.
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