Three Gorges Dam History - Advantages

In May, 2006 Three Gorges Dam as long as 2309 meters has been completely totally completed. It is the largest con concrete gravity dam all over the world. Three Gorges Project is the water project with the most comprehensive benefits including the flood control and navigation, besides the most generated energy in a year. Three Gorges Dam has been praised as the world record of water project of the world.

Three Gorges Dam History - Advantages

Flood Control

According to Three Gorges Dam history, this is the most important role of Three Gorges Dam. The normal water level of Three Gorges Project is 175 meters, besides the flood control storage keeps 22.15 billion cubic meters. The disaster of flood of Jingjiang river channel was prevented effectively, for example, the disaster of flood was happened once in ten years before but now it could be able to happen once in one hundred year. According to the record, the direct economy benefits are 2.5 billion Yuan annually. And regulated by Three Gorges Dam, the loss from flood disaster will decrease around 769 billion Yuan if suffered from the flood such like the one in 1870.

In addition, Three Gorges Dam prevents the levee collapsing and the death of population and keeps safer of some countries such as Wuhan City and other facilities.

Generate Electricity

Before completed of Three Gorges Dam, the water flows into Yangtze River, which is equivalent to 50 million tons of coal or 25 million tons of crude oil wasting.

After the completion of Three Gorges Dam, the total number of installed capacity increases to 18.2 million kilowatts and average generated energy increases to 84.7 billion degrees.

Great Environmental Benefits

Compare with the population of generating electricity by coal-fired power, there are 100 million tons of nitrogen oxides besides large number of dust and waste residue will be greatly reduced. Three Gorges Dam also effectively prevents the harm of acid rain and other environmental contamination.

At the same time, Three Gorges Project is beneficial to augment the water flow of the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River in dry season, besides it is good for the living environment of rare animals and other kinds of fish in winter.

Navigation

Three Gorges Reservoir improves the ability of navigation of area of 660 kilometers so that ten-thousand ton ships such as Yangtze Cruise could arrive Hankou from Chongqing Municipality directly. With the benefits of Three Gorges Reservoir, the depth of the water improves 0.5 meters in average in dry season insuring the safety of the ships.

On the other hand, there are also some disadvantages of Three Gorges Dam. After the completion of Three Gorges Dam, some natural scenic spots have to be moved, some will be submerged all the time. For example, after submerged, Mengliang Ladder, Zhang Fei Temple, and group of carved stone has been moved to another place.