SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Water levels at China's giant Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river are inching closer to their maximum after torrential rains raised inflows to a record high, official data showed on Friday.
With 75,000 cubic metres per second of water flowing in from the Yangtze River on Thursday, the reservoir's depth had reached 165.6 metres (543 feet) by Friday morning, up more than two metres (6.6 feet) overnight and almost 20 metres (65.6 feet) higher than the official warning level.
The maximum designed depth of China's largest reservoir is 175 metres (574 feet).
Authorities raised the discharge volume to a record 48,800 cubic metres per second on Thursday to try and lower water levels, and they might have to increase it again to avoid the possibility of a dangerous overflow.
Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai are all downstream...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday August 22 2020, @02:12PM (1 child)
And sometimes those fail like the Glen Canyon dam about 35 years ago.
You build a spillway, don't test it under full load, whoops a daisy you can end up with a huge mess even if the dam under normal operation doesn't or couldn't fail.
Yeah yeah yeah, its 2020 nobody forgets cavitation damage anymore. The real point is the Glen Canyon debacle happened after centuries of civil engineering. Its not like the failure happened the same week the steam locomotive was invented LOL. There's plenty of phenomena out there left to discover the hard way even in 2020.
Much like world history did not end in 1989 and progress in Physics did not end around 1900, there's likely more civil engineering left to discover.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday August 23 2020, @08:45AM
https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/07/18/1983-arizona-glen-canyon-dam-lake-powell-almost-overflowed-colorado-river/1662234001/
Interesting tale.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves