China fills Three Gorges reservoir to maximum

Tue, 26 Oct 2010

Beijing - China filled the massive Three Gorges reservoir to its highest designed capacity on Tuesday, a move that officials said would enable the dam on the Yangtze river to maximize power generation and other functions.

Filling the 600-kilometer-long reservoir to the 175-meter level for the first time should "enable the project to fulfill its functions of flood control, power generation, navigation and water diversion to the full," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Cao Guangjing, the chairman of the China Three Gorges Project Corporation, as saying.

Work began on the Three Gorges Dam and hydroelectric power plant in 1993, with filling of the reservoir and electricity generation starting in 2008.

Last year, the government said it had spent 180 billion yuan (26.5 billion dollars) on building the 185-meter dam and the reservoir, but critics claim the cost could be more than twice that amount.

The Three Gorges project includes 26 700-megawatt generators with a total designed capacity of 84.7 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, according to the Three Gorges corporation. Six more 700-megawatt generators are under construction.

In January, the government said it planned to move another 300,000 people to create an "ecological protection belt" around the reservoir, after relocating 1.3 million residents over the past 17 years.

A survey in 2007 found 9,324 sites around the reservoir were at risk of landslides and other geological hazards.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/350388,three-gorges-reservoir-maximum.html.