Definition of three gorges dam

The impacts of Three Gorges Dam on China

Wangjunyi Guo

Student ID:202050752

Table of Content 1. Introduction 3 1.1 Definition 3 1.2 Research Aims 3 1.3 Research objectives 4 2. Literature Review 5 2.1 Introduction 5 2.2 Background 5 2.3 History 6 2.4 Positive effects 6 2.4.1 Floods control 6 2.4.2 Power generation 8 2.4.3 Navigation 9 2.5 Negative effects 10 2.5.1 Migration 10 2.5.2 Environmental damage 10 2.6 Conclusion 10 3. Methodology 11 3.1 Prediction 11 3.2 Data and result analysis 11 3.3 Research methods 11 4. Bibliography 12

1. Introduction

1.1 Definition

Since the project of Three Gorges Dam was provided in 1990, it has been finished in 2009, the effects of Three Gorges Dam has been increasing significantly in China. Three Gorges Dam is the biggest dam in the world, and the project of Three Gorges Dam(TGD) is also the largest water control project in the world(Xie, 2015), therefore, it is the most important key for controlling and developing the Yangtze River in China. The major reasons why build the dam are to defend and reduce disastrous floodings in the middle areas of China, especially in the Jingjiang section part. The second important use is to provide electricity ti central China, south-eastern China, and Sichuan Province. In addition, it provide some good conditions of navigation for the Yangtze River section from Chongqing to Yichang(Huang, 2018). There are some effects of TGD, they would be illustrated the positive and negative aspect of TGD to ensure why TGD should be exited for now.

1.2 Research Aims

This purpose of this paper is to find out and understand the impacts of Three Gorges Dam with different aspects through analyzing drawbacks and benefits to evaluate it and looking for the reasons why TGD is important and necessary for China. Moreover, i will also find the result of failure of TGD, with some previous research, I will make a prediction of it, pointing out the consequences of failure of TGD to show a different aspect why TGD is so important for China by using prediction.

1.3 Research objectives

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of Three Gorges Dam on China. There are some following detailed description of the objectives:

Research Objectives 1: showing the disadvantages of building the Three Gorges Dam, giving some examples of them.

Research Objectives 2: looking for the advantages of having Three Gorges Dam including two aspect - financial and technological, pointing out the contribution of what Three Gorges Dam build.

Research Objectives 3: making a prediction of this topic - what if Three Gorges Dam got damaged, finding the previous research to analyze what would happen with it.

1. Literature Review

2.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to review three important parts: 1. the positive effects of TGD, 2. the negative of effects of TGD, 3. the prediction of TGD failure. First if all, i will start at the background of TGD, showing more detail about it including different aspects such as the history and the development. In addition, i will introduce the involved types of engineers and make little definition of them. Moreover, I will show the development and future improvement of TGD. there is a interesting topic followed, it is a prediction through finding the different research to analyse what would happen if the dam was broken. TGD has made big attentions from people in the field of sea environment(Deng, 2016).

2.2 Background

The project of Three Gorges Dam(TGD) is one of the largest hydropower schemes in the world, which is on Yangtze River, China. It started officially to build since 1994, and the Yangtze River was dammed in 1997. The whole process totally took around 13 years, from 1993 to 2009. constructing the main dam(Xu, 2011). The water level of Yangtze River already reached 135 metre in June 2003, reaching at 156 m in September 2008. Because of this project, the environment system of climate has experienced a significantly change around Yangtze River area(Guo, et 2018).

Source: Google Image

2.3 History

There is a original idea of this project in 1990, it was defined in the ‘ Brief Report on the Comprehensive Utilization of Yangtze River Basin’ and officially pointed out by the State Council of China in 1990(Huang, 2018 ). Yangtze is the longest river in Asian, taking the 35.1 percent of total flow in China(Cao, 2011).

The height of TGD is 175 m, and the length is around 2335 m. the TGD is a total concrete gravity type dam with crest at 185m. the major working volumes of this project has some important parts including 10,283 million m3 of earth and rock excavation, around 31.98 million m3 of backfill. In addition, there is about 27.94 million m3 of concrete material, 260,000 tons of metal work and 460,000 tons of steel bars. The total estimated cost is around ¥50.09 billion. However, the final cost was about ¥203 billion(US $31.765 billion)(Huang, 2018).

It was located in Yichang, Hubei province, China. The project of TGD was finished in 2006 and reached a full generating capacity of 18.2GW in 2010(Ma, 2010).

2.4 Positive effects

There are some followed important advantages of TGD for China, including three different aspects:

2.4.1 Flood Control

The Yangtze River basin, stretching west to east in the middle China, is one of the longest rivers and is great of ecological and economical importance(Guo, 2018). It is also dangerous, because the one of the most important reason of building TGD is because it is an irreplaceable key project to control serious floods in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River, the flood peaks a larger number in the upper river area than the carrying capacity of the middle and lower reaches, especially in the area named Jingjiang, the ground of outside the banks is lower than the flood water level standard, such as a suspended river. It is a serious consequence once an extraordinary flood occurs, it would overtop the dykes, making about 15 million people in dangerous, 1.53 million ha of farmland and a amount of big or medium cities, including enterprises and important communication facilities, would be destroyed in Jianghan plain and Dongting Lake areas. This is always a potential problem for China from past to now(Huang, 2018).

In addition, because of the completion of Three Gorges Dam, it becomes a large reservoir of 39.3 billion m3 in storage, and 22.15 billion area is set for regulating flood peaks and saving flood water. Therefore, it increases the water capacity of flood control in Jingjiang which could be up to a standard against a 100-year-frequency(Huang, 2018).

Source: Google Image

2.4.2 Power Generation

The another importance of TGD is providing power production and energy. TGD is the most largest dam of generating electricity, there are many generators within the dam which using the potential energy by water to generate electricity. The aims of TGD is to transmit realizing electricity from west to east and unifying the arrangements of electricity supply for whole China(Huang, 2018).

As the table shows, because of the number of installed units, when they are increasing, the production of electricity would raise. Therefore, the annual output was around 85 TWh before 2004 with only six generators. After that, since 2012, the generators are installed to 32 units, the power provide is around 90 TWh.

At the same time, the location of TGD is approximately 1000 km from the main power load areas in east-southern of China, the power transmission could cover all the areas.

Table 1: From Wikipedia

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Source: Google Image

This graph is showing the data of annual power output of Three Gorges dam in 2008. The total installed capacity of TGD provided is 18,200MW, and the an annual output is 84.7 TWh, the maximum of total installed capacity could be up to 22,500 MW with plus six generating units of underground plant, all the data is accounting for one-tenth national total from 2008(Huang, 2018).

Comparing with the past data, the original generator has increased to 26 from 2003 to 2008, and the production of electricity increased to a high level at 80.8 TWh, started at 8.6 TWh. The data is almost 10 times than 5 years ago between 2003 and 2008.

2.4.3 Navigation

The Yangtze River is known as China’s heart, called’ golden water-way’, with a way of shipping length of more than 70,00 km. It takes a high percentages of the national total around 70 percent for an annual shipping volume about 80 percent of national inland waterway transportation(Huang, 2018). Therefore, it is obvious that Yangtze River is the most important waterway in China which has huge impact on economic of China. the way of suitable navigation would be significantly primary from west to east China. It becomes a shipping artery. However, for this waterway of 660 km-section from Yichang to Chongqing, runs through steep canyon, and the water level is high around 120 m, the flow is rapid and surrounded by dangerous reefs. There were poor conditions for navigation, the cost is so high.

However, the success of building TGD, it prove some good navigation conditions of the section from Chongqing to Yichang, the level of water is higher, navigable depth is increased, the reeds are submerged(Huang, 2018).

2.5 Negative effects

2.5.1 Migration

The people who lived in this place named Yichang, Hubei province, China, are asked to leave this area and move to other places. Fortunately, the government of China would offer the new places for them to live. But they have to adapt a new place and give up the area where they are raised up.

2.5.2 Environmental damage

The most significantly bad effect is to destroy part of environment, because of building Three Gorges Dam, the pollution of the area of TGD will increase. Because more water would be stored here and not allow to go until it is opened. The flotation material and waste from the upstream are trapped and accumulated on the surface if the Yangtze River, causing the water pollution and affecting vessel navigation(Zhang, 2015).

Furthermore, the sae animals lived here got significantly effected. Some of them almost die out, such as the most famous sea animal Chinese sturgeon. it has same value with panda within quantitative and importance.

2.6 Conclusion

In general, the project of Three Gorges Dam is the most significantly important project for China, there are three important parts to illustrate the benefits of TGD for China in Floods Control , power generation and navigation. Two negative effects also has been raised, environmental damage and the migration of people.

In addition, i have made a comparison of power generation between past and current, to show the huge potential of TGD, and the capability of TGD could do for China. It has a huge impact on China, the positive aspects are important than the negative aspects.

3. Methodology

3.1 Prediction

This chapter will introduce the prediction of damaged TGD, method structure, and the data and result analysis used in this research.

As this research mentioned before, it is simple to make a prediction if Three Gorges Dam has damaged. First of all, the maximum storage of TGD could store 22.15 billion m3 water, once it is broken, around 15 million people and 1.53 million farmland will be destroyed, including a number of big and medium-sized cities such as Yichang, it may cause a big consequence even to Shanghai. The production of electricity would be effected, especially for the east and west China. the whole economic of China would be influenced as well.

3.2 Data and result analysis

As the data showed before, with the development of TGD, the good effects of TGD project has increased for China in many aspects including financial and technological. In financial, although it cost a huge number of money around 31 billions dollar, TGD could provide power generation to the whole China without any stop, especially for the developed cities in East south China. The table shows the increase of production of electricity of TGD provided, the importance of TGD would be increased. Although there are some negative effects of TGD, the benefits of TGD are more than that. And government also did some policies for the negative effects to reduce them. Therefore, Three Gorges Dam will be better in the future.

3.3 Research method

It is important for me to collect data and find researches online to improve and develop my research by secondary sources. This paper is using the method of analysis and comparison in my research, it is also a secondary research. Collecting data is a important process for engineers, there are three main methods: quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods(Creswell, 2008). for my research, it is easy to collect data and saves amount of time to do the paper. For example, my topic is the impact of Three Gorges Dam on China, i will type the key words on online library and Google Scholar such as impact and TGD.

4. Bibliography

Huang, Z. and Wu, B. (2018). Three Gorges dam. Beijing: Science Press.

Xie, Y., Yue, T., Xin-sheng, C., Feng, L. and Zheng-miao, D. (2014). The impact of Three Gorges Dam on the downstream eco-hydrological environment and vegetation distribution of East Dongting Lake. Ecohydrology, 8(4), pp.738-746.

Guo, Y., Lai, S., Zhang, J., Liu, Q., Zhang, H., Ren, Z., Mao, D., Luo, C., He, Y., Wu, H., Li, G., Ren, D., Liu, X. and Chang, Z. (2018). Mosquito population dynamics during the construction of Three Gorges Dam in Yangtze River, China. Acta Tropica, 182, pp.251-256.

Xu, X., Tan, Y., Yang, G., Li, H. and Su, W. (2011). Impacts of China's Three Gorges Dam Project on net primary productivity in the reservoir area. Science of The Total Environment, 409(22), pp.4656-4662.

Ma, Yue (November 26, 2010). "Three Gorges Dam". Stanford University. Archived from the original on April 11, 2016. Retrieved February 13, 2016.

Creswell, J.W (2008) Research design qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches SAGE Publications, Inc. Available at: http://ncbaeryk.yolasite.com [ last Accessed: 01/03/19]

Deng, K., Yang, S., Lian, E., Li, C., Yang, C. and Wei, H. (2016). Three Gorges Dam alters the Changjiang (Yangtze) river water cycle in the dry seasons: Evidence from H-O isotopes. Science of The Total Environment, 562, pp.89-97.

Cao, L., Zhang, Y. and Shi, Y. (2011). Climate change effect on hydrological processes over the Yangtze River basin. Quaternary International, 244(2), pp.202-210.

Guo, L., Su, N., Zhu, C. and He, Q. (2018). How have the river discharges and sediment loads changed in the Changjiang River basin downstream of the Three Gorges Dam?. Journal of Hydrology, 560, pp.259-274.

Zhang, K., Gong, W., Lv, J., Xiong, X. and Wu, C. (2015). Accumulation of floating microplastics behind the Three Gorges Dam. Environmental Pollution, 204, pp.117-123.