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Three Gorges Dam

Added Aug 16, 2013 •

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from the Waters of the Yangtze river in China Rises the biggest concrete structure on the planet the Three Gorges Dam is over two kilometers long and sixty stories tools  it is taking 40,000 workers over 17 years to build when it fully comes online this one dime will produce over 20,000 megawatts twice as much just pulled in nuclear power stations in Britain put together  it is the Pinnacle of dime engineering the Three Gorges Dam owes its success to fi Landmark times  that the height of each lies a major technological innovation allowed Engineers to build even bigger. one by one traveling up the scale will reveal the incredible story Behind these structures aliens allowed them to produce ever more power 6 ingenious leads forward from the bigger into the world's biggest China is one of the fastest-growing economies on if you need whichever accelerating industry the nation needs more power much of this will be provided by an enormous **** spanning the mighty Yangtze River in central China cooled the Three Gorges die malecon Reserve been granted privileged access to capture this amazing feat of engineering and its full Glory before they could start building the three the Chinese first have to divert the Yangtze River which is almost two kilometers wide and move over a million people from the area are about to be and when they filled the reservoir the huge mass of water actually slow down the speed of the Earth's rotation by a fraction Three Gorges Dam is the biggest hydroelectric project in the world this **** used million cubic meters of concrete maybe one way to look at it is to say solid pipe a concrete a meter diameter right around the world what's a lot of concrete  the Chinese authorities think it's worth the effort as the Three Gorges Dam will provide clean and cheap electric Paws to millions of people do you understand how the Three Gorges Dam can put you so much we need to travel back in time  to 19th century Britain and the motor stream in Northumberland the power of a the world's first hydroelectric Dam in the 18 hundreds while Britain is at the heart of the Industrial Revolution this house the last word in modern living  it belongs to Lord Armstrong and entrepreneur and obsessive inventor because fitted his house with state-of-the-art technology including Central Heating and Mechanical Devices that drive elevators laundry machines next expense but there is one place in the house where modern technology is sadly lacking as historian Anthony Burton explains this was Armstrong's real pride and joy the picture got a full of wonderful Victorian paintings with gloomy Cannondale I really wanted to do was to bring his guests here in the evening but the flicker of kind of like nothing really worked Armstrong needs our electric lights and a way to power them  how do you generate electricity glass Dominguez known 50 years was Michael Faraday a given the secret you move a magnet in relation to a color what what it'll set up here so it might work now here we are here we go to magnets on the end of this disc and here is a cold one now this spin relation to that we should make electricity yes we're getting a reading on the I mean we are definitely making electricity everytime the magnets on the desk moved past the coil they generated electric pulse in the copper wire  so make a large electricity you need much bigger kitchen this is what Armstrong bull the tungsten Vortex turbine a grand piece of equipment buying needs a huge volume of flowing water to drive to rotate Armstrong has available is it tiny stream trickling through his estate what he needed was this a lot of water how does it get this out of a small stream a built a dam Armstrong building Earth World nearly ten meters high which terms has stream into a deep link  this man pushing down increases the pressure at low at that Armstrong channel is high pressure water down through a pipe he injected into a Thompson weather torrent spins the roaches  Mission Sun rotates a Shop link to a generator produces 4000 watts of electricity  the Armstrong this is only the first step to enlightenment now you needs to get the electricity from the turbine house at the bottom of his dumb all the way to his picture gallery over how much are away Armstrong connect two strands of thick copper what the generator to carry the electricity up to his mansion  Orlando uses 5 tons of Chapala a single light bulb  but he has created a world first a house lit by the power of water on the other side of the planet in central China the Three Gorges Dam takes Lord Armstrong's concept to the extreme British engineer Robin channel would have been working on the dime since 2003 and is still impressed by its scale we're in one of the three very large pot houses in the Three Gorges is this 700 meter long from here you can see 14 at the large turbine generators then one kilometer away is the second power house and then beyond that one was yet another Powerhouse which would be underground in the Rock on the far side of the river which one of these generators cost about 50 million dollars give you an idea of the scale of this project **** **** **** had one Three Gorges has 32 together they produce 5 million times more power than them the Chinese of harnessed the power of the mighty Yangtze River  in the reservoir behind the dime the Rhythm Rises up to 60 stories above the Rhythm it water is channels down gigantic concrete choose towards the hear the tons of water turbines and makes them spent this motion is in time transferred to the rotor of the generator this is fitted with massive magnets which move past copper coils in the casing to generate electricity just one of these machines makes as much electricity as a small nuclear power plant density to Jen just together produce enough power for 60 million Chinese this project is setting a new Benchmark in the international hydroelectric industry it's almost twice the size of an egg of course he's heard me the first time whole series of Mega dads that are under construction air in China  back in 1878 debden show that even the smallest stream can be harnessed to produce electricity but to generate power on a larger scale Engineers have to wrestle to build a dime that could produce 128 megawatts French engineer's how to persuade raging River Running you quotes France in 1914 the outbreak of the first world war plunges the country into a deep energy crisis with that color feels occupied by the Germans the French of full stream portco from abroad to feed that power plants and keep the car going  so off to the war they decide to boost the nation's power supply with electricity from a hydroelectric Dam but building a concrete dam in the fast-flowing dodo in River presents quite a challenge this is all about you hold on the beach now you can't just pull Concrete in the middle of a river they have to build three Festival attempt goes in here what's called a cofferdam that stops the river flowing just stop it's going to go over the top unless you do something different to stop it back up again you putting a second coffee down here and you can spacing between which you can drain and that you can build your main **** at the door doing engineer's Blast 2 tunnels through the rock to carry the Divergent they drunk steel cages containing rocks into the river to make that temporary then they strengthen it with concrete now is the river behind the dam begins to rise it drains through the tunnels stop this water from backing up the engine is build a second confidant once the war drains from the riverbed between the dimes it leaves a perfect dry spot to build the main. tempted to Central Pump the river bed was so they could go straight on top  lab giant concrete structure Rises 30 stories up from the riverbank the engineer is then closed the diversion tunnels and allow the reservoir to fill up and submerge the confidence that job done finally they can open the gates to the turbines and stop producing a when the Mirage dime is finished it produces 128 megawatts  enough to help power a train n2o Lyon  and Supply the City of Paris 400 kilometers away with electricity the Yangtze River is over 6,000 kilometers long and then places several kilometers wide the biggest river in China  it presents in Norma's logistical challenges to the damage nears  as the Rises behind the Three Gorges Dam it will flood over a hundred fifty thousand acres of land along its banks so the Chinese have to locate over a million people from the land behind the dime  thousands of new houses have to be built for the displaced citizens to live in then the engineer's can begin to down the river we're standing here among some of the rocks and the precast concrete blocks that we used to create the confidence to control the river during the construction of the Three Gorges project  control sing the river to allow the construction of this huge project with Canadian major undertaking and with the Yangtze River is wanted largest rivers in the world and very fast 3D building these confidence and to allow a safe construction was a major operation the Chinese claim to this was the largest and most difficult devotion everyone's a taken for a hydroelectric project then you look at the scale of it they were absolutely right this was huge the engine is Begin work on a series of stone confidence to block off part of the Yangtze  was leaving at for the rest of the river to flow through they build the first two sections of the main dime on the dry riverbed how many dump tons of Earth into the river and on top of it build another confident this time from concrete  with the river building check behind it they can finally build the last section of the van then they must remove the so the water can flow through the turbines of the main. built such substantial confident structures it's amazing how to remove these things so in the in the earliest stages where they were built of then they could be handled with big excavator equipment relatively conventional but in the final stage where they had a solid concrete wall remove this required some serious innovation  unlike the cuff a diamond Marez the China Russian is too tall to Simply leave it in place  so the Chinese engineers build it leaving hose for explosive charges on the 6th of June 2006 they filled them with 190 tons of dynamite and hold that bread what is taking months to build takes only seconds to destroy as the coffee time is it unleashes the water stored behind it It's the final test for the Three Gorges Dam I did hose back in 1935 the marriage done proved that Engineers could divert what's the build powerful dimes but to break through the 1000 megawatt mod American Engineers building the Hoover Dam at that building material to the Limit in the 1930s the USA decide to tackle one of them big economic problems the cities in the Western United States grow because they lack both Water and Power so to break the deadlock engineer's Begin work the world's biggest. The Human Adventure is everything sit on a plaque hanging from a rope off the top of the cliff and I we got along with hydraulic hammers basically smashing out the Cliff face so that when you pull the concrete up to it would get together well  they pulled more concrete on this **** than on any other construction project before it but managing so much concrete can be a big headache for a dime engineer any big concrete pools great particular problem is hate the first thing you have to understand is that concrete is made up of three basic ingredients first of all we have this stuff which is cement now that's the active ingredient that's what reacts and changes which reacts with cement and you have this stuff down his bicycle Sky's and which gives the whole mix its strength now when we put the cement in hair what we going to have is a chemical reaction a hydration RI exothermic which means the temperature of this law should rise to less have a test and see if we're right how we can say it Rising that already gone up to 15 degrees C and if we wait around a little while longer Odell up some more what we see now is that we do get a temperature rise ouch but actually when you're in the middle of a great big concrete pool that has nowhere to go when it expands it cracks the concrete is on the outside of it and if you'll do me a big concrete pour in a Time cracks or bad thing is the concrete of the Hoover Dam is pulled in one go the concrete on the outside will cool and Harden first while in the core of the dime the call stays hot and tries to expand  this could stress the concrete and make it crack so the engine is cost the concrete for the Hoover Dam in small individual blocks as the concrete need to block tools it shrinks but it doesn't crack the contraction leave small gaps between the blocks which engine is Mister filled with cement  but this clever design doesn't solve all the problems who the time is enormous Miller six million tons of concrete in Hoover Dam and if we were able to this generation by that curing concrete into a single oven we could cook half-a-million loaves of bread everyday the free is this left on it to finish shrinking DeFalco Frank Crowe and I call him hurry up Kroger's is a man in a rush and he says this is not good enough River to cool my dab  Crow and beds over 950 kilometers of Steel flights into the concrete of the Hoover Dam he builds a huge water chilling Factory yeah he cools Rhythm Wars it down to 4 degrees and then shoots it through the pipes into the hot concrete this shortens the cooling time from 125 years to unli 22 months now this works at tree all I have to do is finish the cement grout of the pipes and they're out of their Fantastic Cafe the actually took five thousand men only 21 months to build a structure punch it  the Hoover Dam stores 35 billion cubic meters of water and at the time generates more power than any time in the world  with this magnificent down behind them the cities in the American West can finally begin to thrive the free Gorges Dam takes Concrete Construction to new heights  you look at it you can just picture the thickness of the concrete at the base of the day the height of its 130 meters and its 2 km long so it's a colossal amount of concrete  Three Gorges uses end times more Concrete in the Hoover Dam so the engineers have to pull out all the stops to keep that **** cool  basic use everything in the book they cooled the Aggregates in the materials the Sands before they put it into the mix they added ice they did everything they could to get the temperature down to Lowe's they could for it starts to warm up all by itself because of the issued some of the summer weather being specially hot July and August actually went so far as to use a funk spray system to blow effective Leah fog blanket over the top of the Dan with the objective of blocking the radiation from fighting down into the concrete and adding to the heat that was being generated on the inside but all these measures to stop concrete will count for nothing if the diamond built on weak foundations as civil engineer at mechanics Plains tell me all the harder for us to make the riverbed in permeable of course once the war is up behind the **** head huge pressure this way and was the diamond at the war through the what would simply just goes underneath and that means you can go much of a dime there is a solution to this and will give me a hand so have a look at it  what you got here is basically a pipe Network these are series of vertical Parts go into the river bed with little holes in the side of them we connect them up to a high pressure pump cuz he wouldn't be this baby big pump in this pump what we've got is Walt regrout cement and water and when that cement that goes hard creates an impermeable barrier just this time it's in the soil I'm pretty much straight away you can see the grout coming out and running through the soil the spreading out which is see what we want to see if it goes a long way in another where is it doesn't get through that means that the soil is denser and less permeable there what you do is you drill Mulhall's down into the areas here and he's got more grouchy bicycle you keep going until you go continuous underneath and then we have our impermeable Dan on top of the river bed and we've created a concrete Dam underneath the riverbed to create an impermeable concrete cutting beneath the Three Gorges Dam engineer next 100 kilometers of tubing down into the granite bedrock then lake pump do you hundred thousand cubic meters of grout into the choose which is squeezed in the fishes in the rock  Iceland The Leaky rock into a solid waterproof bags for that time now the Chinese engineer's can be confident that the Yangtze will not undermine that. back in 1936 the Hoover Dam prove that Engineers could build and possibly big concrete nouns as long as they kept them cool but X grew they held back Evamor water and with it tremendous destructive power  to build the Grand Coulee Dam American Inn from a catastrophic effects of a blunt Ghost Town Pennsylvania vet youth of May 1889  as the town gets hit by the heaviest rainfall in its history the Tranquility of Adam Reservoir is about to be shunted it rains between and the water reaches the top of the dime  zoo that has nowhere to go over the top the dime sales in million tons of water empties in 45 minutes a world of water 18m High crashes down the valley and hits Johnstown Archer destruction and shoes  over 2200 lives are lost in the flood  it is the worst disaster the US has ever seen why do dimes bust when they overflow and add mechanics Plains vulnerable Twinkle Toes scallop and we going to have a guy that modeling to see if we can see what happens with tow Scout this is a flood coming along now River and it fills up the hill now  and the will soon stop pushing over the top and coming down and it will full down spice and Skyler white underneath then you can see that I'm starting to move already as the ground in front of it is lost the dime loses its foundation begins to rotate it be too long before it goes old together and fine  which is a reasonably satisfactory down yeah when it goes we get a tremendous rule of water come down the valley  and if you happen to be down there you'll probably dead now so you can see that tongue scar on this whole time is a huge potential problem is something that absolutely has to be fixed in 1933 American Engineers start work on the Grand Coulee Dam across the Columbia River in the North America a dime that dwarfs even the Hoover Dam  it needs three times more concrete and spans three times the distance as the engineers complete the Grand Coulee Dam they have to make sure that what happened in Jonestown won't happen here water rushing over the dam could quickly a road I'm coolest disaster so the engine is formed the butt stop the time into a concrete run this sends the water shooting down the spill what tumbling Vortex which dissipates its energy  how's the water Cascades off the ramp it loses much of its with the ramp in place engineer's can safely run the largest hydroelectric dam in the the title of the Grand Coulee Dam retains to this day Builders of the Three Gorges Dam face a similar problem  they too must make sure that their dime is not damaged by flood water rushing through it base view the dam holds back a large volume of the water during the flood. Here it can hold back about 22 billion cubic meters of water and then it's released in the control way through this system of 46th Gates when did you conceive  the design of a Spillway like this has to deal with the force of the water as the cops over 100 m in this case hit and then achieves huge velocity at the bottom of the dam to deflect the force of will check crashing down the Chinese use technology similar to the Grand Coulee  how's the two levels rise engineer's open a series of gates to drain the flood water from the reservoir  but if the water fell straight down that could end find the foundations of the dime  so the engineers fit the spillway with concrete shoes the Grand Coulee rump which is underwater the Three Gorges shoots hold of water into the air Nebel the water breaks up into small droplets and loses much of its destructive energy headlines over 100 m dance what time do any damage so now when they open the spillway Gates the Chinese have nothing to worry about back in 1942 The Grind showed how dimes could deal with the abrasive power Flemington but to build a dime across the yenisei river in Russia engineer's have to find a way to stop the water while keeping the ships moving in the 1960s the Soviet Union wanted to upscale its industrial power so they plan a series of gigantic dimes one of the first the cruise noise that will stretch your hole cross the river yenisei and generate 6,000 megawatts of power  but this river is also the main shipping route in to sign and would get blocked by the time  the keep the ships moving engineer's hatch and ingenious plan they will build a steel trough big enough to carry a ship  then they will push trough I'm s*** up yeah they will spin the whole Contraption round and lower it down to the river on the other side to move the $7,000 ton load they will use hydraulic pumps engineer Ed McCann employs a hot water bottle to demonstrate the principle behind hydraulic power connected to my hose connected up to this play about meat in this system Hot Wheels still squashed flat I'm going to stand back eggs I don't know how to block somebody head  some lifting up it's about three meters now how you can see the concrete blocks moving very quickly now  undertake it's about four meters that I go but you can see there is the Amazing Power of force you can get out surround the pressure the Russian Engineers use Liquid on the add to list that s*** can the Wolves of the chamber a powerful pump switch squeeze hydraulic fluid under men's pressure into a set of Motors Mountain below  these Drive huge steel comes that propelled the Truffle Olive Diner the motifs generate so much traction that they lift the Chamber from River to Reservoir in only 19 minutes when the ship left open the citizens of cruise mask turnout in drugs this mechanical Marvel is the crowning Glory biggest dam in the world at China's Three Gorges Dam the engine is also face a major traffic problem that dumb sits on one of the busiest rivers in Asia  the Yangtze is a really important Waterway for navigation traffic in China leaving all the way from Shanghai to coast up to Chang Chongqing is been carrying about 18 million tons of freight per year getting about 170 shifts a day over a dime that's more than a hundred meters high is a tool order for the engineer's defeating the biggest dam on Earth the Chinese sold it by building the biggest ship lock on it ships and to the lock in the bottom of the time  the gates closed water floods in and lift the ships are the next ships must go through five tiers of locks to get to the top which can take after 4 hours this is fine for cargo ships but for the many passenger boats operating on the Yangtze it's just too slow to provide more efficient Transit opportunity for passenger traffic is built this ship lift system here which will allow boats to go through in about 6 minutes  unlock the ship lifts at Christmas asked the one of the Three Gorges will lift ship straight up like an elevator at the secret of its success will lie hidden and its concrete world the engineers will fit a series of massive counterweights that will do most of the lifting 16 1000 ton concrete blocks will be connected by to the steel trough that will carry the ship I'm the water it floats in  as the counter weights drop they will upwards and lift the ship to the top the ship left here is 113 meters high and can handle vessels up to 3,000 tons I will make it the largest in the world and twice the size of the one that Crush music  set a reminder to look at the structure now it's got a ways to go X Construction won't be finished till 2015 but it's it's after 150 years of innovation dimes and produced ever more power today that was hard form of energy that is as clean is hydroelectric power  but as dimes grow bigger so does that impact on the environment in that design of the Three Gorges Dam Chinese Engineers have to make sure that their structure doesn't completely block Nature's Way of feeding the the Three Gorges Dam produces more power than yeah but that's not the main reason it was built is notorious for his ready severe flooding last two thousand years as being about one major flood every 10 years in 1931 there was a really bad one killed about a hundred 85000 people destroyed almost two million homes and this is the main reason why the Three Gorges Dam is to control this terrible the dime blocks the path of the destructive flood water the water is stored in its Reservoir and this unreleased in a controlled way  the managing flood water can also have environmental side effects as recent history has shown  in 1970 the Gyptian engine is billed as one Across the River Nile to control flooding but soon promise Downstream noticed that that harvests a beginning to fail this soil come so Barren that the farmers need millions of tons of fertilizer every year to nourish that Crocs  the Atlantis because it has been deprived of flood water which carries with it the vital building blocks of life chemist dr. Andrew shitload demonstrates so we have hero clean rainwater witches been fooling we adding to it good quality topsoil we then add some animal experiments  we have some snail shells essentially made of calcium carbonate then we have some dried leaves plants vegetation here and fish  that's the store precedes as the water starts to flow rapidly all of these in Indian skit stop in the hugely violence toll motors Wichita so here we have it a veritable cocktail of Mother Nature's most important plants nutrients nitrogen phosphorus calcium magnesium and potassium Graceland water stops flowing these nutritious particles of silt will begin to settle  this is a big problem especially biggest dam in the world the flow of precious thanks esyllte is blocked by the dime and trapped in the slow-moving water reservoir  did rapidly sinks to the bus and where something Pablo on the Yangtze is a huge problem the total amount coming down it's about 500 billion tons per year which equates to about one kilometer Q apps enough to fill big stadiums hundreds of time  if this silt remains trapped behind the between the farmers fisherman and Wildlife would be deprived of nutrients in the water for hundreds of miles Downstream and the tons of settled silt sediment could build up in the reservoir and threaten the damage sound basically settlement falling into the reservoir here would reduce the capacity of the reservoir capacity and would eventually perhaps interfere with the ability to run the turbines if it was came of that cleverly the Chinese engineer is exploit the power of flood water to flush the sediment out of the reservoir and send it Downstream Landstuhl sluice Gates deep inside the dime each gateways is much as a bus and needs a powerful hydraulic piston to lift it up when The Operators open the gates flood water rushes over the track settlement and sweeps it through the time this way the Chinese authorities hope that it will be at least another 100 years before the buildup of sediment Effects Power production at the time but even the clever purging system cannot carry all the sediment across the **** scientific estimates on how much sediment remains behind littlest 30% to as much as 60% the Chinese authorities believe the is a price worth paying they are convinced that the benefits of the time such as clean energy and flood control far outweigh significance drawbacks

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Three Gorges Dam

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