Hard engineering: the Three Gorges Dam Flashcards
Which river is it located in and how wide is it?
The Yangtze River and is 2.3km wide
How high is the dam?
185m
Flood in 1998 features:
killed over 3,500 people,
left 13M homeless
Caused billions of dollars of damage.
Economic impacts
The overall cost of the dam is estimated at roughly ¥180 billion. It will take nearly a decade for the dam to pay for itself by generating electricity.
Overall the dam will have a positive effect on China’s economy as the dam aids the navigability of the Yangtze by making it slower and deepening the channel.
Social impacts
The dam has succeeded in reducing the risk of flooding, taking the recurrence interval for large floods from 1 in 10 years to 1 in 100 years.
Over 1.2 million people were required to leave their homes as they were going to be inundated by the dam’s reservoir.
The reservoir ended up flooding 13 cities.
Environmental impacts
The Yangtze transports a lot of sediment that is now being blocked behind the dam.
The blocked sediment will alter the chemical composition of water upstream from the dam.
The Three Gorges Dam serves as a hydroelectric power plant that has a capacity of ~22.5GW2.
Political impacts
The forced relocation of 1.2 million people has raised numerous human rights concerns.
The World Bank refused to fund the project because of the environmental and social problems that were associated with the project.
If the dam were to be breached, it would cause a lot of damage and kill a lot of people. The dam is thought to be a potential target for terrorist organisations in Taiwan.
