07-06-2003 22:09									#1
	China Combats Nature.. Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...rgeous_gorges_2

quote: BEIJING - For centuries, poets have extolled the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River for their beauty. Boatmen feared their churning brown rapids. Their cliffs were pictured on China's 10-yuan note along with Mao Zedong. But soon the gorges of Qutang, Wuxia and Xiling will be no more, submerged and transformed into narrow places in a vast lake behind the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project. The sluice gates of the 630-foot-tall concrete wall began closing at midnight on May 31. Since then, state television has aired daily updates on the rising water. The dam is the biggest of a series of vast government projects ranging from an attempt to replant vast tracts of forest to a multibillion-dollar project to shift water from China's wet south to its arid north. Construction of the dam had pressed ahead despite complaints about the $22 billion cost, the forced relocation of some 1.3 million people, the inundation of temples and historic sites, and the danger of possible catastrophe in the event of a dam break. Critics worry the dam will worsen pollution on the Yangtze and that the giant lake could make the hazy local weather even wetter. The dam's main wall is now complete after 10 years of construction, but installation of turbines, generators and other equipment won't be finished until 2009. Chinese leaders say the dam will both produce power and reduce chronic flooding along the Yangtze, though experts say both could be done more effectively and cheaply by a series of smaller dams. Judith Shapiro, an expert on environmental politics at American University in Washington, describes the dam in her book "Mao's War Against Nature" as a monument to the Communist Party — an echo of "Maoist megaprojects that aimed both at mastery of nature and suppression of human freedoms." As the dam's gates closed, state television devoted hours to live broadcasts showing water behind the dam creeping up the walls of buildings in abandoned towns. By June 15, the water is expected to be 445 feet deep directly behind the wall, Xinhua said. Xinhua said three diversion channels were left open to ensure an adequate flow of water on the 4,000-mile-long Yangtze, which runs from the plateaus of Qinghai province in the west to the eastern coast near Shanghai. The national legislature approved the dam in 1992 despite an unprecedented show of opposition by normally compliant delegates. Construction began in 1993. Since then, more than 735 million cubic feet of cement have gone into the dam's wall. The dam is regarded as a personal project of the Communist Party's former second-in-command, Li Peng, a Soviet-trained engineer who retired in March as head of the national legislature. The dam is to start producing power this year and will expand its capacity to 18.2 million kilowatts from 26 power-generating units. By the time it is completed, the water level is to reach 578 feet behind the dam. Shipping, banned in areas surrounding the 254-square-mile Yangtze river reservoir from April 10, is to resume on June 16, Xinhua said.

Is this massive project worth the cost of uprooting a million people and destroying many ancient sites? I don't really know all the aspects of the project so I'm not really sure. I would think that the alternate soulution of a series of smaller dams would have been better but I'm not an engineer. What do you all think.

	07-06-2003 22:11									#2
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china's doing it for the glory. i don't like it so much, because i wanted to see that region, but...

	07-06-2003 22:13									#3
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The size of the project does make it seem that the goverment there is more interested in their image than the actual practical benifits of the dam. I guess the question one should ask is could a series of smaller dams do just as good as some massive mostrousity.

	07-06-2003 22:17									#4
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It's a national schlong size demonstration. Smaller dams and multiple points of generation are more effective and more economic. Three gorges is such a large project that it's hit reverse economy of scale.

	08-06-2003 08:12									#5
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I think 'forced relocation' is hyperbole. This is not people being put on cattle cars, this is more like what we did to the Cree tribes in the James Bay hydro project.

	08-06-2003 09:03									#6
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Even though with the additional benefits of making the Yangtze more navigatible (is that a word?), I still don't like the idea. It's going to have some huge ecological impacts on a very large area.

	08-06-2003 09:39									#7
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the word is "navigable"

In the US, it has some funny regulatory uses that give rise to what I call the "molecule of water doctrine" due to how broadly some agencies define the limits of their authority to regulate navigable waterways.

	08-06-2003 09:53									#8
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I'm in favour, really. OK, it is a shame all those ancient sites are relocated, but if it means less coal or nuke power stations then that has to be a good thing.

The past is all very well, but we should be more concerned for the future.

	08-06-2003 10:33									#9
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Hey, don't diss Nuke stations.

Down with Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas!

	08-06-2003 10:34									#10
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What's so bad about Natural Gas?!

It's the greenest fossil fuel out there!

My daddy's truck uses propane, so don't diss it.

	08-06-2003 11:03									#11
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From what I've seen of it on my last visit (about a year ago) the people being "relocated" were "relocated" to damn nice houses. Houses that would cost a fortune...several bedrooms, running water, etc. Of course, it's not their traditional home, so that could be a bad thing, but it's damn nice! Of course, I'm not sure if everyone got one, they say every family that got relocated was given one (families usually having 10+ people anyway, as is traditional in China, especially rural areas), of course I can't confirm that. As for the beauty of the Gorge, it really was spectacular...except for the unbareable humidity...

	08-06-2003 11:10									#12
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Yeah, those houses are very nice, particularly when compared to the old houses they moved from.

	08-06-2003 11:42									#13
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quote: Originally posted by Cruddy I'm in favour, really. OK, it is a shame all those ancient sites are relocated, but if it means less coal or nuke power stations then that has to be a good thing. The past is all very well, but we should be more concerned for the future.

The past would be preservable (or a lot of it, at least) with smaller multiple dams and generating stations. For the same amount of money, you'd also get rid of 30-50% more coal power that way, and have better electric system reliability.

The real "owie" is going to come about 50 years after those Mega-schlong Mark I generators are installed, because they'll all have to be pulled from the turbines and the cores rewound. That will mean a lot of power curtailment, or a lot more coal or something to make up for the lost power.

A big contributor to the western US power mess in 2000-2001 was rewinding of half the generator cores from Hoover dam.

	08-06-2003 20:36									#14
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quote: Originally posted by St Leo Hey, don't diss Nuke stations. Down with Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas!

From a UK (more an Irish) POV nukes are bad because we have decided that nuclear fuel repocessing is a valid and good idea.

Which is why the Irish sea is the most radioactive in the world and - possibly - why an awful lot of Irish folks die of cancer.

The fact that we take in other countries' nuclear crap means we're not wholly to blame - but Brit taxpayers paid for the damn place so I guess that's where most of the blame has to lie.

You would think we would have negotiated a permanent dumping facility for the really toxic stuff.

So you can appreciate why nuke isn't main item of choice from our POV.

As for rewinding the cores of the Chinese generators, let's hope they learn from the Hoover dam experience and phase it more gradually, eh?

	09-06-2003 04:17									#15
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MtG is pretty right on with the project though, a lot of it is for prestige. Definitely moreso than for practical value. Just like Sputnik, but less innovations will come out of this project. First it was the wall...now this...