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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @11:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the dam-it! dept.

Torrential rain in the Midlands and North of England that saw half a month's rain fall in one day caused such volumes of water to pass through the spillway of the Toddbrook Reservoir dam, above the town of Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, that the protective concrete facing was damaged—badly enough to put the dam at risk of a full collapse.

Were the dam to fail this would be the first dam breech in the UK since 1925, when the Llyn Eigiau dam burst when its foundations failed in Wales, and its floodwaters overtopped the Coedty reservoir dam downstream, causing it to also fail and flood the valley at the cost of 16 lives. With emergency work underway and more rain forecast, this is still a very real possibility for the Whaley Bridge dam.

The dam above Whaley Bridge is an earthfill or embankment dam built in the 1830s using a mix of soil and gravel. The massive volume of water cascading down through the hills of Derbyshire's Peak District from the heavy rain meant the floodwaters increased the reservoir water level up to the dam's crest and onto the concrete spillway. Most dams are equipped with these concrete structures for the safe and controlled release of excessive flood water downstream.

But in Whaley Bridge the concrete spillway has collapsed under the torrent of high-speed waters, leaving a substantial hole across about a fifth of the face of the spillway. In fact, the current concrete spillway was installed at Whaley Bridge in around 1969 after it suffered similar damage in the winter of 1964.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @08:12PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @08:12PM (#877207)

    I'd rather pay $1000 every fifty years then $10000 every two hundred years.

    More like it would be cheaper (once supply chains are in place at scale) and lasts for 2,000 years. Then repairs amount to swapping out old lego pieces for a new one you just poured.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @08:34AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @08:34AM (#877817)

    The standard is it is about 15-35 percent more expensive than portland. *BUT* the chemistry is entirely different as is the preparation and some of the ingredients, causing the traditional concrete based industry to prefer to ignore it, and as a side effect for the politicians and building code drafters to be unwilling to do the necessary testing and add the necessary rules for it to be a common and acceptable building material. However university and individual tests of its material composition and structure cause it to compare favorably with common cement (some of the ultra-higher pressure variants are still stronger, but also more prone to cracking or requiring reinforment.)

    I looking into geopolymer at the same time as biorock when Anemone55 released his pozzolanic type-s geopolymer recipe under the MIT license. There were a few additional variations by other individuals, the original 'egyptian' style using natron and other natural materials from the Nile and adjacent areas, and iochief's variations using I think it was lime. The low calcium variations are more saltwater resistant, as is the Roman cement, which used pozzolans from Mt Vesuvius if I remember correctly. The current source for Type-C and Type-S flyash is coal power plants which produced it in massive quantities, to the point of shipping containers worth of it selling for a few hundred dollars for multiple tonnes.

    If you combine the two techniques and some good horticulture practrices, you can build anywhere for long term self sufficient activities.