Thursday, July 30, 2020

Is China's Three Gorges Dam Near Collapse?

China's state-run Global Times quoted a local official that said the structure is "safe and in good condition."

The SUN: WAVE OF DEATH New China cover-up fears with world’s largest dam ‘on brink of collapse risking tidal wave that could wipe out cities’

CHINA is facing new cover-up claims amid fears the world’s biggest dam is about to collapse causing a tidal wave which could wipe out entire cities.

Sections of the vast Three Gorges Dam in the central Hubei Province are reported to have moved under enormous pressure sparked by torrential rains.

And concerns were mourning last night that the giant structure could collapse - sending a devastating 250 foot tidal wave surging hundreds of miles.

The 570-foot dam holds back a staggering 39 billion cubic metre reservoir of water so huge that it has a measurable effect on the rotation of the earth.

It is five times the size of America’s famous Hoover Dam and generates eleven times as much electricity, vital to millions of Chinese homes and businesses.

Read more ....

Update: "Rumors Of Structural Faults ​​​​​​​" - China's Three Gorges Dam Could Be Nearing collapse (Zero Hedge)

WNU Editor: All my friends in China told me it was a bad monsoon season. There was wide spread flooding, and many dams were under pressure. And while the Chinese government is saying that there was nothing to worry about.... Three Gorges Dam weathers the flood challenge (Asia Times), the pictures that were globally posted showing the floodgates open for the Three Gorges Dam were shocking.

9 comments:

Alex said...

I've been following the dam quite closely and it has remained well within its design parameters regarding water level and flow, however, these levels have been managed at the expense of communities upstream and in some cases downstream; China has been breaking dikes all over the place to try and spread out these massive amounts of water by deliberately allowing huge areas of farm land, towns, etc to flood in order to accomplish what the CCP tells everyone the dam does. Intentional upstream floods reduce flow towards thedthe and intentional downstream floods absorb some of the massive flow which is too much for downstream areas to manage. The real cover-up is not that the dam is going to fail but that in order for this dam to do what the CCP said it would (flood control) the CCP has been massively flooding possibly millions of its own people.

An interesting theory on this is that the CCP has been providing little to no warning before flooding out these areas because if there is a warning then people know it was a "controlled" flood and will demand compensation but if it is sudden they can claim it was just natural breaks in levees and in that case it's an act of God and it won't be pinned on the CCP.

Anyway, in terms of design, the dam should not be at risk of failure, but it is also an unprecedented scale of project and it is possible that cavitation damage from the high flow has been sustained, and there are major problems with accumulations of debris/trash as well as tremendous sediment accumulation which is a problem that will not go away.

Jac said...

Thank Alex, I appreciate your knowledge on that. Still, the CCP said itself that the dam has "move" a little bit. Okay, but what a little bit is?

RussInSoCal said...

Alex is right.


https://twitter.com/freddie1999/status/1284562813365768193

VIDEO: #Beijing authorities seen destroying levees along the #Yangtze, devastating rural communities in #Jiangxi in order to protect their industrial investments

Anonymous said...

Alex,

Where is the cavitation damage? A quick web search has articles on cavitation happening on spillways. I would assume many spillways could have their surfaces repaired during a dry season. Well, spillways are repaired in an expeditious manner do unless it is California Oroville dam.

I would assume that sediment near the dam could dredged with a suction dredger down to depth of 100 meters. In the US they dredge 700 million cubic yards year. The Chinese were always going to have to dredge that dam.

Where is Liu Bei, when you need him?

Anonymous said...


That their dam measurably impacts the planet caught my eye.

It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Remember that ad?

Anonymous said...

How is it against nature? Changes the spin rate of the Earth?

Anonymous said...

India is building dams in the Himalayas above fault lines, so...

Mike Feldhake said...

Saw an interesting vid yesterday that the Dam is actually the cause of the flooding because it’s changed the flow characteristics of the river

Mike Feldhake said...

“It changed”