The
Three Gorges Dam Project, located in Sandouping, Yichang in the Hubei
Province, was first suggested
by then President of the Republic of China Sun Yat-Sen in 1919. It
was his vision to harness the power of the Yangtze River by a dam to
further
economic
development
in China, using the benefits of hydroelectric power. The Yangtze
River
is the third largest and longest in the world. It is 3,937 miles
long with an annual discharge of 960 billion cubic meters of water
into
the East
China Sea. The source of the river is glacial ice form the mountain
range south-west of Chongquing. The drainage area of the Yangtze
River is 1.8
million square kilometers, and floods about once every ten years.
Courtesy
of Water Technology.
The $24 billion project was formally approved in 1992 by
the National Peoples Congress. Construction began in 1994 and is scheduled
to be complete by 2009. It is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world.
The dam consists of three parts: the dam itself, the ship locks, and
the shiplift. The dam is 600 feet high and 1.3 miles across. It consists
of a center spillway, to let water over the dam, and each side houses
the hydroelectric turbine generators, twenty-six in all. The right side
of the dam is fully operational, while the left side of the dam is scheduled
to be fully operational by 2009. The generators will be able to produce
as much power as eighteen nuclear power plants, about 84.6 billion kilowatt
hours. The ship locks are located on one side of the dam. There are two
in total, one for upstream traffic and one for downstream traffic. There
are five locks, or stages, used to transport large ships, twelve at a
time, over the dam. Both ship locks are fully operational. The third
part of the dam is the shiplift, an elevator used to raise smaller ships
over the dam. The shiplift is scheduled for operation in 2009.
Parts
of Three Gorges Dam. Courtesy
of Hillman Wonders of the World
The water behind the dam is expected
to reach a final height of 525 ft by 2009. The length of the forming
reservoir will be 36 miles,
thus the reservoir will be able to store up to 39.3 billion cubic meters
of water. The height of the river is expected to rise as much as 375
miles upstream of the Three Gorges. Since the change is water level is
so drastic, as many as 1.3 – 1.9 million people are being forced
to move.
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