After learning about the damage caused by China’s Three Gorges Dam, the whole world is shocked. The world’s largest dam in China has slowed down the Earth’s rotation speed.
Three Gorges is considered to be the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. The project began in 1994, when China was looking for a greener and more efficient way to generate energy to meet the demands of a rapidly growing population.
There was an increase in technology throughout the country. This dam is also built for another important purpose. Due to the size of the Yangtze River, local flooding was encountered.
Millions of residents were affected, especially during the rainy season.The dam was built to improve the quality of life for people in Hubei province, but it has also been found to slow down the Earth’s rotation. The concept of the Three Gorges Dam was first proposed in 1919 by Sun Yat-sen, the Interim First President of the Republic of China, to control the flooding of the Yangtze River as a symbol of China’s power.
It took many years to build this dam. According to media reports, the Three Gorges Dam holds water 175 meters above sea level, weighing more than 39 trillion kilograms. During the construction of the dam, it was designed with high-efficiency technology such as state-of-the-art hydro turbines.
NASA claims: 0.006 microseconds of time change each day
According to media
It is the largest dam in the world with an impact on the earth. In 2005, scientists from the American space agency NASA estimated that the speed of the Earth’s rotation decreased due to the Three Gorges Dam. Wind, earthquakes, climate change and the position of the moon also affect the Earth. The reservoir of this dam holds 42 billion tons of water. This causes the Earth to lose its momentum as it rotates. A day’s time has increased by 0.06 microseconds due to the change. Due to this interruption, the day has become a bit longer.
According to NASA, due to this dam, the north and south poles have moved 2 cm each from their respective positions, while the earth has also become slightly flat at the other poles. China had the largest investment in the project. The total cost of the dam was estimated at 25 billion US dollars, but it has reached 37 billion. The dam, which was supposed to be completed in 2008, took 17 years to complete for 40,000 people.
Once operational, it can produce 22,500 megawatts of electricity. Due to the high volume of water held back by the dam, it created small earthquakes within the western region of China. In order to protect the people of China during construction, 1.3 million people in the area had to be relocated because of the earthquake instability caused by the dam.
Due to the construction of dams, people have left their motherland and also destroyed historical heritage. The ecosystem of various species of animals which are now in danger of extinction has also been destroyed. The dam has actually affected the residents of 114 towns and 1,680 villages in three provinces. Because of the communist regime in China at that time, those who came out to protest the dam were suppressed by the government.
Every Chinese leader’s dream
Every Chinese leader since Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, dreamed of building a big dam on the Yangtze. In his industrial blueprint for the Republic of China in 1919, Sun envisioned the construction of the Three Gorges Dam to improve navigation and provide hydroelectric power to the entire country. The revolutionary leader did not get to see his dream come true.
His successor, Chiang Kai-shek, continued this work in the 1940s. Hoover invited John L. Savage, an American engineer best known for his work on the construction of the Dam, to survey the valleys and prepare a design for the Three Gorges Dam. Chiang sent dozens of Chinese engineers to America for training, but the project was abandoned during the Chinese Civil War.
After the Chinese Communist Party took power, Chairman Mao Zedong endorsed the project, writing in a poem about ‘stone walls’ and ‘a slimy pond standing in a narrow gorge’. But his plans were thwarted by the upheavals of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. When his successor, Deng Xiaoping, reintroduced the idea in the late 1970s, some prominent hydrologists, intellectuals, and environmentalists strongly opposed it. They point out the human and environmental costs of population displacement, geological hazards, and environmental risks.
Chinese Communist rule was the most politically relaxed and liberal era in history. Much debate ensued throughout the next decade. But after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, open dissent was suppressed and the political environment became oppressive.
Four months after the massacre, authorities jailed journalist and environmentalist Dai Qing, author of a book critical of the project, Yangtze. Now confident that it could proceed with the plan, the government put the dam up for a vote in 1992 before the country’s legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC). The dam was approved, but about a third of the delegates refused to support it. China’s typically rubber-stamp parliament had a surprisingly low approval rate.
In a 1994 edition of Yangtze’s Yangtze, Yang Xinren, a representative of northeastern China’s Jilin Province, said, ‘Most representatives do not have full knowledge of the technical aspects of the project. So no matter how we vote, we vote blindly.’
Why was it controversial?
Displaced residents have complained of inadequate compensation and lack of arable land and employment after relocation. Many have accused the local government of embezzling rehabilitation funds and using excessive force to quell protests. In 2013, the Chinese government admitted that part of the funds had been misused, according to CNN.
Many have also faced wage cuts to survive. According to Chen Guoji, a scholar at the government-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences, migrant families’ incomes have dropped by 20% since relocation.
Because they had to leave their cultivated land near the river to cultivate the steep, unstable slopes. Dams also have serious geological impacts.
In 2007, according to a report by China’s news agency Xinhua, Chinese officials and experts have acknowledged that the Three Gorges Dam has affected the ecosystem, including frequent landslides. The first disaster occurred in 2003 when the reservoir first started filling with water.
The landslide started after the water level reached 135 meters. A few weeks later, a rock fell into the tributaries of the Three Gorges, killing 24 people, destroying 346 houses and overturning 20 boats.
Earthquakes in the surrounding area have been blamed for the dam’s proximity to two major fault lines. Scientists argue that the weight of large reservoirs and the intrusion of water into the rocks below can ‘trigger’ earthquakes in areas already under considerable ‘tectonic’ stress.
According to a study by the China Earthquake Administration, in June 2003, 3,429 earthquakes occurred in the reservoir during the six years it was filled. From January 2000 to May 2003, only 94 earthquakes were recorded.
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