(February 7, 2011) Here is an article on the Three Gorges Dam we stumbled upon written by University of Victoria PHD student Trevor Williams. The article was inspired by a seminar by Probe International Fellow Dai Qing presented at the University of Victoria.
The University of Victoria, in conjunction with Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, recently hosted a seminar with Dai Qing, a Chinese journalist and activist who has written many books and articles about the Three Gorges Dam – also known as The Golden Waterway. The seminar sparked my interest in the Three Gorges Dam so I decided to find out a little more, and to blog about Dai Qing’s seminar highlights.
The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest hydroelectric project, holding back 22 billion cubic metres (5,812 billion US gallons) of the Yangtze River in Yichang, Hubei province, China. Officially it was completed in 2006 but construction on power generators, ship canals and a ship lift, as well as other expansions and work, is likely to continue for another decade.
Everything about the project is on a monster scale, including the existing 26 generators, each of 700MW capacity, with another 6 to be built for a total of 32. It has also proven to be a very expensive undertaking, costing upwards of 254.2 billion yuan (US$37.23 billion) according to a Reuters report from the Xinhua news agency. Other media sources have put the bill nearer US$75billion.