The Three Gorges Dam - Yangzi River

The Yangtze Three Gorges Project (TGP) is the largest hydropower-complex project ever built in the world. On April 3 rd 1992 , “the Resolution to Construct the Three Gorges Project on the Yangtze” was approved at the 5 th plenary session of the 7 th National People's Congress. In 1993, the preparation for the construction commenced, and on December 14 th 1994 , the project construction formally started. On November 8 th 1997 , the River Closure was completed, marking the successful fulfillment of the Phase I construction task. In 1998, the Phase II construction of the TGP started in full swing. After 6 years of arduous work, on June 1 st 2003 , the reservoir of the TGP started to store water, and on June 16 th , the double-lane five-step shiplock of the TGP was put into service, and on July 10 th 2003 , the first unit with 700 MW capacity was connected to the grid and began to generate electricity. So far the goals of the phase II construction have been fully achieved. The TGP, which was drawn the world's attention, began to return favor to the society with its comprehensive benefits.With the genial care and strong support form the CPC Central Committee, State Council and the people of the whole nation, all the TGP constructors bearing the lofty ideal of “Committed to Build TGP for China ” honored the mission with 10 years continuous joint efforts and now the dream of the whole China has come true. At the time of realization of the three major goals for Phase II construction, the compiling of this album aimed at introducing the layout of the TGP construction, recording the history of the TGP construction in the past ten years, and showing the main achievement of Phase I & II construction. As a significant infrastructure for the nation to build a well-off society in an all-round way, the TGP is grand and vigorous, complicated in technology and profound in meaning which can not be fully demonstrated only by about a hundred pictures or so. At present, the TGP is still under construction and all the TGP constructors are striving for the successful realization of the goals set in Phase III construction.

Photo by Ray Devlin

TGP is a multi-objective development project with great benefits in flood control, power generation, and navigation and so on. The project consists of river dam, spillway structures, powerhouse, buildings for navigation, etc, and organized by the scheme officially briefed as “developed in one scale, completed in one time, water-storage by stages, and continuous mgiration”. The dam is concrete gravity dam , with the spillway in the middle, and the power house and non-overflow section at both sides . The axial length of the dam is 2309.47m, the crest height is 185m, and the maximum height of the dam is 181m. With a normal storage level at 175m, the total capacity of the reservoir reaches 39.3 billion m 3 , of which the effective flood control capacity reaches 22.15 billion m 3 .

The total period of TGP construction is 17 years, which can be divided into three phases. Phase I (1993~1997) was designed mainly to do advance work for project construction and excavation of diversion channel with the river close-off as the milestone. Phase II (1998-2003) was mainly designed for construction of spillway and left-bank power house and the ship lock, with the completion of initial water storage, commercial operation of first batch of generators and ship lock open to navigation as several significant milestones of this phase. Phase III (2004-2009) has the main task of construction of right-bank dam and powerhouse, which is symbolized as the commercial operation of all the generator units and completion of the project.

Photo by skootter01

The Three Gorges Project has seen over 1.3 million people re-located, from conditions of poverty to relative levels of comfort. Not all Chinese citizens wanted to move, obviously, but many saw it as a way to escape the desperately poor living conditions they had. Almost entirely new cities had to be built higher up on the steep banks of the resevoir, including new bridges and erosion control. The entire project cost only $30b. This seems like a ludicrously low price given the scale of the project. However, Chinese building practises and environmental controls do not hamper projects the way they do in Europe and USA. Having seen the construction first hand, you have to worry about safety and environmental damage such a project costs. However, China will save huge sums of money - and in fact already has, by eliminating devastating flooding on the Yangzi with the Dam and by selling of the energy created by the hydro plant. The project submerges 13 cities, 140 towns, 1352 villages, 600 factories, and 1200 archeological projects. An engineering marvel, but fundamentally flawed project.

The Yangzi (or Yangtze) is the longest river in China, and the third longest in the world. It stretches from a Tibetan plateau over 6000km to the East China Sea at Shangai. It is navigable by ocean going vessels over thousand miles from the mouth.

Photo by TimS