Three Gorges Dam

     Since the discovery of electricity inventors have been thinking of creative new ways to use it. Whether it is Thomas Edison’s light bulb or Bill Gates’ personal computer, they have all created a need for power generation. Early on water and wind mills were used to produce energy, but it was not enough to sustain the industrial age. People then turned to coal. In more recent times countries have used nuclear power plants because of its large outputs of energy. The down side is that this process creates large quantities of byproducts that are fairly difficult to dispose of. That is the very reason why sustainable “green” energy has been researched. This research has brought about wind turbines and solar panels. The problem with them is they fail to produce enough energy to replace the older ways of production. Fortunately, there exists a way to harvest large quantities of energy with small amounts of pollution, dams. Dams, as well as almost everything else, have been welcomed with mixed opinions. The Three Gorges Dam (TGD) is no different.

     TGD is the world’s largest Dam. It is composed of 27.96 million meters cubed of concrete and is located on the Yangtze River in China. Construction was started in 1994 and was finished in 2008 except for a ship lift, an elevator for ships. When finished the lift will be the world’s largest lift, yet only take a bit over thirty minutes for the whole transportation process of one ship as opposed to the almost four hours it currently takes a ship to maneuver through the locking system. One of the major reasons that TGD was build was to help prevent the flooding of Shanghai, a very large city downstream. The way that TGD does this is by storing excess water during the flood session and releasing it during the dry session therefore maintaining a more constant level. It will also be a vessel to increase shipping capacity along the Yangtze by widening its banks and deepening its bottom. One of the main perks of TGD is that at full capacity it produces 22500MW of power per year which is comparable to about 15 nuclear power plants or 750,000 wind turbines. The Itapúa dam was the world’s largest dam by producing more than 12000MW per year until TGD was built.

     Even though TGD has many positives it also has many negatives. For instance, it displaced over 1.3 million people in order to build the dam and flood upstream of the dam. This is a large number, but when you think of the 13 million in Shanghai that they are protecting from flood it does not seem so bad. However, the Chinese government did a poor job with retrieving ancient artifacts form sites. More than 1300 sites went under water and many where unexplored at all. During the flooding process also many habitats where either changed or destroyed.

The Three Gorges Dam has its draw backs, but it is much better in almost every aspect that anything else out there right now. From wind to nuclear, I think that Hydroelectric is the best mode for creating power. I also think that The TGD is a masterpiece to dams.