Saudi female writer Rajaa al-Sanea, who authored the widely published novel Girls of Riyadh, attends a discussion session on the second day of the International Festival of Literature in Dubai on February 27, 2009. The first-ever Dubai literary festival opened on February 26 after sparking an international row over censorship when a British novel that features a gay sheikh was rejected. Sixty-five writers from 20 countries, including Britain and the United States, are participating in the four-day Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature, said festival director Isobel Abulhoul.
DUBAI (AFP) – The first-ever Dubailiterary festival opened on Thursday after sparking an international row over censorship when a British novel that features a gay sheikh was rejected.
Sixty-five writers from 20 countries, including Britain and the United States, are participating in the four-day Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature, said festival director Isobel Abulhoul.
The festival faced an international literary storm earlier this month after news that The Gulf Between Us, a romantic novel by Britain's Geraldine Bedell, was turned down by the organisers.
"This has nothing to do with censorship... We simply found after reading the book upon the request of its publisher, Penguin, that it is not suitable for the festival," Abulhoul told AFP on Thursday.
Canadian Booker-prize winner Margaret Atwood, who is the vice president of PEN, the literary anti-censorship organisation, pulled out of the festival outraged by the decision.
But she wrote on Saturday in the London's Guardian newspaper that she regretted her decision, which she took based on the belief Bedell's book had been banned.
Atwood is now expected to participate through a video conference in a hastily-arranged debate on censorship during the festival.
Festival participants include American Pulitzer Prize winnerFrank McCourt, veteran BBC war correspondent Kate Adie as well as authors Louis de Berniere, Kate Mosse, and Wilbur Smith who is due to launch his new novel ASSEGAI during the festival.
Also taking part is Saudi female writer Rajaa al-Sanea, who authored the widely published controversial novel, Girls of Riyadh, which recounts the live lives of four girls in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
- FRIDAY, Feb. 27 (-- You might look like you're not paying attention when you doodle, but science says otherwise.
in the United Kingdom found that test subjects who doodled while listening to a recorded message had a 29 percent better recall of the message's details than those who didn't doodle. The findings were published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.
"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, of the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, said in a news release issued by the journal's publisher. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."
For the experiment, a two-and-a-half minute listing of several people's names and places was played for test subjects, who were charged with writing down only the names of the people said to be attending a party. During the recording, half the participants were asked to simultaneously shade in shapes on a piece of paper without attention to neatness. Participants were not told they were taking part in a memory test.
When the recording ended, all were asked for the eight names of those attending the party as well as eight place names mentioned in the audio. Those asked to doodle wrote down, on average, 7.5 names and places, while those who didn't doodle listed only 5.8.
"In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process," Andrade said. "If that process is important for the main cognitive task, then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade."
In everyday life, Andrade said, doodling "may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing."
The Supreme Court of Pakistan has passed a short order on different writ petitions challenging the eligibility of the Sharif Brothers. The implications of this decision are that Punjab is free from the highly centralized, Punjabi chauvinist and pro Taliban ministry of Mian Shahbaz Sharif. All control has shifted to the secular and progressive governor of Punjab Mr Salman Taseer.
Mr Shahbaz Sharif and Mian Nawaz Sharif both are convicted politicians, and got of the hook through an unconstitutional deal with the military dictator General Pervez Musharaf. Both of them went into exile with a promise to stop participating in politics. The former Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chauhdry in his decision declared the deal “unconstitutional” thus paving the way of their return. Later, the Sharif brothers entered into political coalition with their political rivals the PPP. Despite the unprecedented media hype, the right wing PML-N of Sharif Brothers lost the elections. PML-N failed to get representation in 3 provinces and even failed to win a convincing majority in Punjab which according to the right wing corporate media is center of their power. Refusing to accept the election results the Sharif brothers with help of political opportunists like Aitzaz Ahsan started an effort to politicize and divide the judicial bureaucracy. The plan was to bring Iftikhar Ch back to power and than get Mr Asif Ali Zardari disqualified and declare the “illegal acts of General Musharaf after 3rd November” null and void which included the “election” thus bringing the right wing back into power through back door
Nawaz-Qadeer deal
The cat was out of bag when Qazi Hussein Ahmad , Ameer of Jamate Islami today in his initial reaction to judgment said what was in their heart for a long time, that “we have always maintained that the general elections were unconstitutional”. This was the precise reason that PML-N and Aitzaz Ahsan and Co were bitterly opposing a “constitutional solution” to judicial crisis. The constitution plan would have given indemnity to certain acts of PCO like General Elections and NRO thus giving the democratic setup an immunity from Iftikhar Ch’s politically motivated and selective judicial activism. The so called “democratic and constitutionalist” lawyers’ movement put on stage fascists like General Hameed Gul and notorious nuclear proliferator Dr Qadeer Khan on centre stage. Instead of asking Jamate Islami to pay for the murder and genocide of East Pakistanis our secular democrats gave Jamate Islami a central role in their movement. The meetings of Air Marshal Asghar Khan and General Hameed Gul with Chief Justice Iftikhar Ch were reported in media and were commented on by progressive writers. The Pakistani Right Wing has this long history of using unelected state institutions to subvert democracy, first they used Army, after General Mushraf the public opinion was strongly against Army hence they planned to use judiciary to control democracy. The plan backfired and the present judges fed up with constant abuses and threats by Sharifs acted and disqualified both Sharif brothers. It’s not an act of establishment rather it was result of conflict of interests between two sections of Judicial Bureaucracy , the clash which took a personal turn due to Farah Dogar case and continuous use of personal abuses against sitting judges by PML-N and a section of Lawyers . Whilst I consider the Judicial Bureaucracy of Pakistan , both section one in power and other out of power and in the lap of Jihadis as inherently corrupt, anti people and politically motivated , I nevertheless welcome the outcome of this decision in Punjab which has resulted in fall of the pro- Taliban government. The media and all representatives of upper and middle classes of Punjab have tried to develop Shahbaz Sharif as a “great leader” of Pakistan, the facts unfortunately are very bitter. A virtual authoritarian Mr Shahbaz Sharif’s first act of government was to “re instate” the colonial mode of governance by restoring the “Babu Raj” of commissioners and collectors. He was leading a highly centralized government which was non democratic, the politicians were powerless, he hardly held cabinet sessions, and whole government was being run by him with the help of chief secretary and hand-picked unelected advisors.
Jihadis in PML-N
This was the continuation of the highly centralized pos- colonial state which Muslim League built in 1947 and the mode of governance which has resulted in all the ills of Pakistan. With Mr Sharif’s loyalist bureaucracy dominated government the Saraiki South Punjab which voted for PPP was increasingly becoming isolated. Already disenfranchised and in grip of Talibanization the inherent Punjabi chauvinism of Sharif was pushing Southern Punjab to the brink. A small example of Sharif’s inherent hatred of Saraiki people is the fact that the Prime minister Mr Yousaf Raza Gilani announced declaring Multan a “big city” in a public meeting saying that Chief Minister on his next visit will issue the notification. Next day Chief Minister visited Multan and to the utter disbelief of workers and labour activist of Multan refused to follow the PM’s order.
There was a virtual police state in Punjab, trade unions were harassed, protesting doctors were beaten up by police on his direct orders, his party was resisting the lifting of ban on student unions in Punjab. This despite the fact that Peoples Party Government had announced lifting the ban on trade and student unions. A more disturbing aspect was Talibanization of Punjab, situation was worse in neglected and isolated Saraiki Southern Punjab; Taliban put posters as far as Multan asking women not to come out of homes and ordering the music centers to shut down. Mr Shahbaz Sharif instead of checking this pushed their agenda forward just like the MMA government of NWFP. On his direct orders police burned CDs and DVDs on Hall RoadLahore, he banned stage dance in Punjab against which the dancing girls of Lahore held a strike. He ordered the administration to check “obscenity in name of Arts and Culture”. All this typical right wing hypocrisy of “Apply Sharia- on- every- one- apart -from -me“. Mr Sharif himself is known to be a fond of a colourful life, and rumours of his liasions have always been in circulation.
If this continued, we were afraid that South Punjab could have turned into next Swat.[It has all the ingredients along with an adjoining tribal area] The fall of pro-Taliban Ministry in Punjab ushers in a hope that a truly democratic government is formed in Punjab replacing the existing one.
Mr Nawaz Sharif after his statement of pushing things “beyond” dharna left nothing for imagination, with Punjab government sponsored Long March , Islamabad was to be put under siege to cause either a fall of Gilani government or restoration of Iftikhar and subsequent judicial coup d’e'tat and fresh election. This is a crisis of Right wing’s own making, and contrary to popular middle class opinion , no sky will fall, there was virtually no people’s agitation in the 3 provinces and isolated cases of mob violence in central Punjab . All they could do was to trample posters of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto in front of Governor House under their feet forgetting it was her which in first place brought the Sharifs out of the trash bin of history after they had escaped to Saudi Arabia leaving people in grip of dictatorship. Don’t we know how active PML-N workers are when it comes to any “protest movement” which is not state sponsored; we all remember 12 people who reached Air Port to receive Mr Sharif and when he was sent back against his wishes and they couldn’t even secure a general strike in Model Town market the next day.
Hopefully the People’s Party will again invite Sharifs for negotiations on a “constitutional package” which will give both parties some thing. Or they will move towards a direct and dangerous confrontation that will bring the system down. Millions of ordinary people unfortunately will remain impoverished and starving - that’s what a capitalist democracy in colonial countries is all about.
"We're having an earthquake," said my wife. It was early one recent morning, as we sat drinking coffee and reading the day's gloomy economic news. Was she being metaphorical? At this hour? We sat in nervous silence for a few seconds, mentally listing our regrets. (Her: Why didn't we put flashlights in all the bedrooms? Me: Why didn't we sell all these bedrooms and rent?) Then we resumed our day.
"The American Earthquake" is what the critic Edmund Wilson called his collection of reportage (mostly for the New Republic) about the Great Depression, and as a metaphor it's a good one. It captures, as "Depression" does not, the element of surprise, the panic, the remorse and the disbelief as it seems more and more likely that this actually is "the big one."
Wilson's book illustrates that some things never change. He attends the testimony of the president of National City Bank (yup, now Citicorp), one "Sunshine Charley" Mitchell, who "sold [Americans] the stock of motor-car companies that were presently to dissolve into water; . . . he sold them the stock of his own bank, which dropped . . . from $572 to $220, and which was recently worth $20." This sort of experience led to the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, forbidding banks to sell stocks, that was repealed in 1999.
Wilson attends a speech by a Republican politician who could have been Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal delivering the reply to President Obama's speech this week: "At Trenton, Mr. Morrow tells the people that 'the resources of the United States are not going to help Trenton out of its difficulties. [That] will be accomplished by its people.' "
Jindal has gotten savage reviews for recycling all the tired Republican nonsense about salvation through tax cuts. If that stuff worked economically, we wouldn't be where we are today, and if it worked politically the Republican Party wouldn't be where it is, either. But even more telling, I thought, was Jindal's little opening riff about how all Americans are so thrilled to see a black president addressing Congress. It seemed so stale, so yesterday. Suddenly Republicans are the party obsessed with color. With blinding speed, the country has moved beyond all that. We've got troubles, we need a leader, and if he can just reassure us that everything will be okay, we don't care what color he is.
Obama's speech was (I'm sorry -- I don't gush often -- but this is what I thought) magnificent. Obama explained things like the credit crunch with remarkable clarity, but without any (Bill) Clintonian teacher-teacher-call-on-me.
Americans love being told how wonderful we are and how -- despite appearances -- it is physically impossible for us to fail at anything to which we put our wonderful American minds and spirit. Obama had just enough of that to make his more astringent remarks digestible.
Words alone can't solve a global economic crisis, but they can help, since the central challenge is reviving demand, which means reviving confidence, and the main enemy really is, as the man said, "fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." When FDR, in his first inaugural address (1933), identified the only thing we had to fear, he was being truer than he could have known. Keynes's General Theory, which laid it all out, wasn't published until 1936. It's interesting to compare Obama's first big presidential speech with Roosevelt's. On the all-important Reassure-o-Meter, I'd call it a tie. Roosevelt wins points for venturing into dangerous areas. For example, he talked at length about "the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success." Can you imagine what Fox News could do with a line like that if a Democratic president (let alone a rich Democratic president) uttered it today? On the other hand, FDR talks about "the overbalance of population in our industrial centers" and calls for a national program to send back home "those best fitted for the land." Not quite sure what that's all about, but Al Sharpton could have a good time with it.
Of course, the crisis Roosevelt was dealing with far surpasses anything we face today -- at least to date. The so-called Greatest Generation lived through the Great Depression (perhaps soon to be renamed World Depression I) and through World War II. My generation, children of the Greatest Generation, has spent its entire adult life waiting for the "big one" -- waiting, that is, for a world-historical challenge. We always figured it would be a war. Guess again.
Oh, and by the way, my wife was right: There was an earthquake that morning. A 4.5 on the Richter scale. Not the Big One. Yet.
Few phenomena generate as much heat as disputes about current orthodoxies concerning global warming. This column recently reported and commented on some developments pertinent to the debate about whether global warming is occurring and what can and should be done. That column, which expressed skepticism about some emphatic proclamations by the alarmed, took a stroll down memory lane, through the debris of 1970s predictions about the near certainty of calamitous global cooling.
Concerning those predictions, the New York Times was -- as it is today in a contrary crusade -- a megaphone for the alarmed, as when (May 21, 1975) it reported that "a major cooling of the climate" was "widely considered inevitable" because it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950." Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today's war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject -- meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes.
On Wednesday, the Times carried a "news analysis" -- a story in the paper's news section, but one that was not just reporting news -- accusing Al Gore and this columnist of inaccuracies. Gore can speak for himself. So can this columnist.
Reporter Andrew Revkin's story was headlined: "In Debate on Climate Change, Exaggeration Is a Common Pitfall." Regarding exaggeration, the Times knows whereof it speaks, especially when it revisits, if it ever does, its reporting on the global cooling scare of the 1970s, and its reporting and editorializing -- sometimes a distinction without a difference -- concerning today's climate controversies.
Which returns us to Revkin. In a story ostensibly about journalism, he simply asserts -- how does he know this? -- that the last decade, which passed without warming, was just "a pause in warming." His attempt to contact this writer was an e-mail sent at 5:47 p.m., a few hours before the Times began printing his story, which was not so time-sensitive -- it concerned controversies already many days running -- that it had to appear the next day. But Revkin reported that "experts said" this columnist's intervention in the climate debate was "riddled with" inaccuracies. Revkin's supposed experts might exist and might have expertise but they do not have names that Revkin wished to divulge.
As for the anonymous scientists' unspecified claims about the column's supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.
Citing data from the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, as interpreted on Jan. 1 by Daily Tech, a technology and science news blog, the column said that since September "the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began." According to the center, global sea ice levels at the end of 2008 were "near or slightly lower than" those of 1979. The center generally does not make its statistics available, but in a Jan. 12 statement the center confirmed that global sea ice levels were within a difference of less than 3 percent of the 1980 level.
So the column accurately reported what the center had reported. But on Feb. 15, the Sunday the column appeared, the center, then receiving many e-mail inquiries, issued a statement saying "we do not know where George Will is getting his information." The answer was: From the center, via Daily Tech. Consult the center's Web site where, on Jan. 12, the center posted the confirmation of the data that this column subsequently reported accurately.
The scientists at the Illinois center offer their statistics with responsible caveats germane to margins of error in measurements and precise seasonal comparisons of year-on-year estimates of global sea ice. Nowadays, however, scientists often find themselves enveloped in furies triggered by any expression of skepticism about the global warming consensus (which will prevail until a diametrically different consensus comes along; see the 1970s) in the media-environmental complex. Concerning which:
On Feb. 18 the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that from early January until the middle of this month, a defective performance by satellite monitors that measure sea ice caused an underestimation of the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles, which is approximately the size of California. The Times ("All the news that's fit to print"), which as of this writing had not printed that story, should unleash Revkin and his unnamed experts.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — During past downturns in technology spending, Dell tended to boast about its ability to weather the conditions better than competitors bogged down by higher-priced goods and cumbersome business models.
In 2009, no such gloating has been heard.
Like its peers, Dell has watched as businesses and consumers have sharply curtailed technology purchases. The decline in sales has proved so severe that Dell’s earnings have fallen to the lowest level since 2002.
On Thursday, Dell reported that net income for the fourth quarter, ended Jan. 30, fell 48 percent, to $351 million from $679 million reported in the fourth quarter of the prior year. Revenue tumbled 16 percent, to $13.4 billion from $16 billion.
Excluding one-time expenses, Dell earned 29 cents a share, 3 cents better than the consensus forecast of Wall Street analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.
Instead of tough talk about trouncing competitors, Dell executives are focusing on their efforts to streamline the company.
The stronger-than-expected earnings reflect work done as part of a $3 billion cost-cutting program, which has included layoffs, the closing of manufacturing plants and a shift toward using contract manufacturers to build more of its laptops.
Dell, based in Round Rock, Tex., said Thursday that it would cut $1 billion more in annual costs over the next two years to improve the bottom line.
“We will be the first to admit that this is a work in progress, and there is more to do,” Brian T. Gladden, the company’s chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts in a call to discuss the quarterly results.
Meanwhile, Dell’s 18-month effort to move away from personal computers and increase sales in potential higher-profit growth areas has stalled with the broader economy.
“They are doing what they can, but are basically still treading water,” said Richard Kugele, an analyst with Needham & Company.
The main drag on Dell’s revenue came from plummeting desktop and laptop computer sales, which dropped 27 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Sales of Dell’s servers, software and services also fell, leaving storage products as the only area of growth.
Michael S. Dell, the company’s founder and chief executive, insisted that it had made progress as part of a turnaround effort he started in 2007.
“Our strategy is to develop disruptive technology and innovation and shift our business to higher margin products and services,” Mr. Dell said on the call.
But in fact, Dell’s overall business appears very similar to what it was last year.
For example, servers and higher-profit services and software account for the same overall percentage of Dell’s revenue as they did last year. And despite making its way into 24,000 retail outlets, Dell derives only 2 percent more of its revenue from consumer sales than it did a year ago.
Investors may give Dell some leeway with its long-term transition given the state of the economy, which makes growth and expansion into new markets difficult. Still, they are demanding that Dell maintain profits in the near term as it chases changes in strategy.
“I think the issue is that their profitability today is much lower than it was historically,” said A. M. Sacconaghi, a securities analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein.
Dell’s once-vaunted direct sales model continues to trail the overall profitability of Hewlett-Packard’s PC operation, Mr. Sacconaghi said.
Competitors like Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. have also proved better equipped to deal with stagnant hardware orders because of vast services businesses, software sales and long-term contracts with customers.
Shares of Dell fell 15 cents, to $8.21 Thursday, before the earnings announcement. In after-hours trading, Dell shares rose more than 1.8 percent, to $8.36.
Why, since President Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” in Washington, do some things feel not quite right?
First there was Steven Chu, the physicist and new energy secretary, warning The Los Angeles Times that climate change could make water so scarce by century’s end that “there’s no more agriculture in California” and no way to keep the state’s cities going, either.
Then there was the hearing in the Senate to confirm another physicist, John Holdren, to be the president’s science adviser. Dr. Holdren was asked about some of his gloomy neo-Malthusian warnings in the past, like his calculation in the 1980s that famines due to climate change could leave a billion people dead by 2020. Did he still believe that?
“I think it is unlikely to happen,” Dr. Holdren told the senators, but he insisted that it was still “a possibility” that “we should work energetically to avoid.”
Well, I suppose it never hurts to go on the record in opposition to a billion imaginary deaths. But I have a more immediate concern: Will Mr. Obama’s scientific counselors give him realistic plans for dealing with global warming and other threats? To borrow a term from Roger Pielke Jr.: Can these scientists be honest brokers?
Dr. Pielke, a professor in the environmental studies program at the University of Colorado, is the author of “The Honest Broker,” a book arguing that most scientists are fundamentally mistaken about their role in political debates. As a result, he says, they’re jeopardizing their credibility while impeding solutions to problems like global warming.
Most researchers, Dr. Pielke writes, like to think of themselves in one of two roles: as a pure researcher who remains aloof from messy politics, or an impartial arbiter offering expert answers to politicians’ questions. Either way, they believe their research can point the way to correct public policies, and sometimes it does — when the science is clear and people’s values aren’t in conflict.
But climate change, like most political issues, isn’t so simple. While most scientists agree that anthropogenic global warming is a threat, they’re not certain about its scale or its timing or its precise consequences (like the condition of California’s water supply in 2090). And while most members of the public want to avoid future harm from climate change, they have conflicting values about which sacrifices are worthwhile today.
A scientist can enter the fray by becoming an advocate for certain policies, like limits on carbon emissions or subsidies for wind power. That’s a perfectly legitimate role for scientists, as long as they acknowledge that they’re promoting their own agendas.
But too often, Dr. Pielke says, they pose as impartial experts pointing politicians to the only option that makes scientific sense. To bolster their case, they’re prone to exaggerate their expertise (like enumerating the catastrophes that would occur if their policies aren’t adopted), while denigrating their political opponents as “unqualified” or “unscientific.”
“Some scientists want to influence policy in a certain direction and still be able to claim to be above politics,” Dr. Pielke says. “So they engage in what I call ‘stealth issue advocacy’ by smuggling political arguments into putative scientific ones.”
In Dr. Pielke’s book, one example of this stealthy advocate is the nominee for White House science adviser, Dr. Holdren, a longtime proponent of policies to slow population growth and control energy use. (See TierneyLab, for more on his background.) He appears in a chapter analyzing the reaction of scientists to “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” a 2001 book arguing that many ecological dangers had been exaggerated.
Dr. Holdren called it his “scientific duty” to expose the “complete incompetence” of the book’s author, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist. Dr. Holdren was one of the authors of an extraordinary 11-page attack on the book that ran in Scientific American under the headline, “Science defends itself against ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ ” — as if “science” spoke with one voice.
After reviewing the criticisms, Dr. Pielke concludes that a more accurate headline would have been, “Our political perspective defends itself against the political agenda of ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist.’ ”
“Public debates over climate change,” Dr. Pielke says, “often are about seemingly technical questions when they are really about who should have authority in the political debate. The debate over the science thus politicizes the science and distracts from policy.”
Dr. Pielke suggests that scientists could do more good if, instead of discrediting rivals’ expertise, they acknowledge political differences and don’t expect them to be resolved by science. Instead of steering politicians to a preferred policy, these honest brokers would use their expertise to expand the array of technically feasible options.
What would honest brokers tell the president about global warming? Dr. Pielke, who calls himself an Obamite, says he’s concerned that the presidents’ advisers seem uniformly focused on cutting carbon emissions through a domestic cap-and-trade law and a new international treaty.
It’s fine to try that strategy, he says, but there are too many technological, economic and political uncertainties to count on it making a significant global difference. If people around the world can’t be cajoled — or frightened by apocalyptic scenarios — into cutting carbon emissions, then politicians need backup strategies.
One possibility, Dr. Pielke says, would be to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the future. He calculates that it could cost about the same, in the long run, as making drastic cuts in emissions today, and could be cheaper if the technology improves. It could also be a lot easier sell to the public.
Yet research into this strategy has received little financing in past budgets or the new stimulus package because it doesn’t jibe with the agenda of either side in the global-warming debate. Greens don’t want this sort of “technological fix”; their opponents don’t want to admit there’s anything to fix. And neither side’s advocates will compromise as long as they think that science will prove them right.
SAN FRANCISCO — Google began running small text ads on the pages of its Google News service this week, reviving a debate between the company and some struggling newspaper publishers, who have seen their businesses devastated by the shift of advertising to the Internet.
For more than six years, Google refrained from placing ads on Google News, in part to blunt criticism from newspaper publishers who were already unnerved that Google was building a competing news site using headlines and snippets of newspaper articles.
The company’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, has sought to assure newspaper publishers that Google was a friend, not a foe, whose own business depended on a thriving marketplace of newspapers and other content creators. Brian Tierney, chief executive of Philadelphia Media Holdings, which own The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, said the new ads contributed to his skepticism about Google’s intentions.
“When Eric Schmidt says he worries about the newspaper industry, it’s crocodile tears,” Mr. Tierney said.
Google, whose own growth has slowed sharply in recent months, said its approach had not changed. “Eric has said many times that we strongly support journalism,” said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman. “We’ve got teams of people who are working with hundreds of publishers to find new and creative ways to help them make money from compelling online content.”
Mr. Stricker said Google had decided to place ads on Google News because it had devised an approach that could deliver ads that were contextually relevant.
Google News automatically collects headlines and article snippets from more than 4,500 news sites and sends users who click on those excerpts to the sites where the articles originally appeared. The service drives significant traffic to many sites. As a result, many publishers have come to accept Google News.
“The Internet world is a very competitive world,” said William Dean Singleton, the chief executive of MediaNews Group, which owns 54 daily newspapers including The San Jose Mercury News and The Denver Post. “We don’t have to let them take our content. We let them do so because it drives traffic.”
Representatives of The Tribune Company; A. H. Belo Company, publisher of The Dallas Morning News; and The New York Times Company declined to comment.
Under pressure, and sometimes in response to lawsuits, Google has agreed to license content for its service from some news outlets, including The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. Those agreements generally allow Google to use the content in different ways, including keeping articles on its own site. Google has maintained that its use of headlines and snippets was permissible under “fair use” provisions of copyright law.
Reuters, which does not have a licensing arrangement with Google, said it would be watching the company closely.
“We are certainly not surprised by the move, which places Google News in a position to compete with news publishers — giving us cause for concern,” said Alisa Bowen, a senior vice president for Reuters.
ear the southern horn of San Francisco Bay, hectares of shallow ponds the color of blood, pumpkin pie, and murky emerald stretch out across crusty salt flats in an aqueous patchwork. The tang of salt air swirls through the autumn air. A flock of seagulls laze on an earthen dyke separating two rectangular pools filled with the Bay's backwater. Scrubby hills stretch beyond one pond's salty banks.
The Cargill food company manages these evaporation ponds, used to produce salt for more than a century. But one day, these ponds could be important for other reasons. The calmness of the scene is belied by vortices of colorful, microscopic algae, churning in the water.
The latest crop of biofuel pioneers are looking past corn and french fry grease to microscopic organisms which they hope to coax into producing fuels to power planes, trains, and automobiles. At first, biofuel experts focused their attention on ethanol from the sugars in corn kernels; next, heads turned to second generation biofuels, such as ethanol from the cellulose in non-food plant parts. Now the next, or third, generation is here. Algal cells pregnant with oil globules.
"We've really seen an explosion in third generation biofuel companies and ideas," says Matt Carr, director of the industrial and environmental section at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "Algae is the hottest in terms of buzz."
The basic concept behind algal biofuels is deceptively simple. Microalgae naturally produce and store lipids similar to those found in most vegetable oils. If scientists can genetically jigger the oil-storing tendencies of algae into becoming more efficient than they are in nature, commercially viable levels of transportation fuels may result. The key challenges include selecting the most suitable algae strains, growing these algal cells at optimal rates, engineering the metabolic pathways that control oil production to create cells pregnant with desirable oil products, and extracting the oil in an efficient and economic manner.
It's not the first time algae have been pegged as a fuel source: Between 1978 and 1996, the US Department of Energy explored the potential of algae, but stopped when the price of a barrel of crude oil fell from $50 to $20. Not since then has there been so much research and development focused on making algal biofuels a broad reality. Dozens of private companies and a few publicly-funded researchers are now working on algae strains similar to those contained in the Cargill ponds, trying to bring the cost of algal oil manufacture down to levels that could save consumers from the roller coaster of gasoline prices. Key players in the algal fuel race include Solix Biofuels, a Colorado-based operation which plans on firing up a closed-tank bioreactor system that uses waste carbon dioxide from beer making, and Aquaflow Binomics, a New Zealand company that seeks to produce biofuels by harvesting wild algae from polluted waterways. Earlier this year, in the first algae-powered commercial aircraft test flight, a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 was powered in part by an algal biofuel produced by California-based Sapphire Energy. Polle uses a homespun appartus to sample algae rich waters near Brooklyn.
In the fading light over South San Francisco Bay, one possible solution to our costly oil addiction splashes color across the landscape. Is this the oil field of the future?
n a clear, sunny November morning, Juergen Polle dips a disposable dropper into a sloshing slough of Sheepshead Bay on Brooklyn's southern shoreline, searching for microalgae. "On average, I get three to ten strains per water sample," he says. Polle escapes his fourth-floor lab at Brooklyn College every chance he gets to sample the waters surrounding Brooklyn and Long Island, on the hunt for species that might one day serve as the tiny engines of a biofuel-based economy. (Still, he's a little reluctant to call himself an algae hunter. "If you want to put it in two words, then yes," he says.)
Down the road from his first sampling site, Polle holds a ball of twine and gingerly lowers a glass measuring cup over a flood wall into more of the murky waters that surround Brooklyn. "Why do I need all those expensive tools?" he jokes. "Why do I need all those expensive tools?" Polle jokes.
Specifically, Polle is looking for efficient oil producers, algae that can accumulate anything more than 30% of their body weight in oils. His work, now a year and a half old, is funded by a US Air Force grant that aims to develop algal jet fuel. According to Walter Kozumbo, manager of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research's bioenergy program, the Air Force uses about 2.5 billion gallons of jet fuel per year. "Clearly there's a national defense issue here with depending on foreign oil," Kozumbo says.
Polle says that since he started collecting algae for the Air Force project, he's isolated approximately 300 strains of unicellular algae, and is in the process of parsing out a few hundred more strains that are clumped together in additional water samples.
The beauty of imagining microalgae as tiny fuel factories is that the compounds they naturally manufacture are chemically similar to petroleum-based fuels. For example, Kozumbo says, the triacylglycerides that photosynthetic algae accumulate generally resemble JP8, the kerosene-based jet fuel of choice for military aircraft. And these unicellular plants don't just make and store these useful oils; they can really crank them out. The US DOE says that microalgae have the potential to produce 100 times more oil per acre than any terrestrial plants, including soybeans.
Polle's hunt has taken him across the country, from ponds and birdbaths in Texas to the Salton Sea of California. Polle has his sights set on collecting in the salt flats outside San Francisco as they likely harbor interesting marine species that he has not yet seen. In similar salt flats near the Great Salt Lake in Utah, Polle found a few strains of algae that he thinks might be new to science, though the constraints of his mandate prevent him from fully exploring these potential taxonomic additions. "At this point we're not really identifying them," he says. "[Taxonomic identification] is not interesting to the Air Force. We just go out and try to find the greatest diversity there is and screen for lipid production potential."
When Polle does find algae that show promise as biofuel producers, he passes them along to his collaborator, Christoph Benning, a plant biochemist at Michigan State University. Benning performs genetic experiments to uncover the biochemical mechanisms that make one algal strain more proficient than another at rapid growth and efficient oil production.
Benning, who's also funded through the USAF jet fuel program, admits that biologists lack a full understanding of the metabolic pathways algae use to produce oil. "We're missing the basic tools," he says. In algae, Benning explains, oils accumulate under physiologically stressful conditions, such as a lack of nitrogen or grossly fluctuating temperatures, which are counterproductive to vigorous growth. That's a central problem from the perspective of someone who wants to grow a healthy algal population that is also proficient at producing and storing oil. Through genetic experiments on Arabidopsis and on the lab rat of algae, genus Chlamydomonas (which naturally inhabits soils and is easily cultured in the lab), Benning hopes to identify transcription factors that are triggered by stressful environments, and could be used to encourage increased oil production in algae without slowing their growth from stress. "We're trying to identify the nuts and bolts of making oil in algae," he says.
Benning's lab has already produced promising results. In 2005, Benning uncovered some of the genes and enzymes important to lipid biosynthesis in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, isolating BTA1Cr, a gene responsible for producing a critical membrane lipid in the species (Euk Cell, 4:242-52, 2005). Since Chlamydomonas is not an ideal oil producer, Benning hopes that what he learns in this model system translates into other, more biofuel-friendly species that Polle might turn up.
e're investors in science sometimes, technology all the time, and magic infrequently," says Erik Straser, leader of the Cleantech team at Mohr Davidow Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Straser's investment portfolio includes a company that feeds farmed pine and poplar trees to bacteria that normally inhabit termite guts and produce ethanol. While scientists are working to develop the technological tools necessary to make biofuels from genetically modified organisms commercially viable, Straser says existing biofuel companies are scrambling to scale up their operations to sizes that will make a real dent in US fuel consumption. Scaling is the magic that Straser awaits. "It's a lot harder than people think."
For a biofuel company to make serious headway in the US fuel market, it must prove that it can produce at least one million gallons of fuel per day, according to Straser. And accomplishing that, he says, takes some major machinery. "You're going to need [closed-tank bioreactors] the size of a football stadium." And biofuel efforts based on open-pond growth of photosynthetic algae, which gather at the surface to draw energy from sunlight, might need considerably more space. Algae samples await testing in Solazyme's lab.
Courtesy of Solazyme
Pat Gruber, CEO of Gevo, a company that produces the biofuels butanol and isobutanol using bacteria and yeast cells, says that going the photosynthetic route is a bit of a pipedream. "There's not enough freakin' land and water in the world to do that. What we've got here is a lot of emotion running rampant without facts being thrown on the table." Gevo's genetically altered "bugs" consume sugars in closed reactors and produce fuels similar, but superior, to ethanol, Gruber says.
Michael Borrus, founding general partner of X/Seed Capital, agrees that scale is a big hurdle. "The big problem with biofuels is that no one knows how to scale anything," he says. "It is possible, sure, but it's not an easy proposition."
One Israeli company, Seambiotic, maintains a 1,000-m2 site with eight oblong ponds that can produce approximately 23g/m2/day of algae, according to its scientific advisor and algal growth expert Ami Ben-Amotz. That growth rate approaches US DOE's stated (but never reached) goal of 50g/m2/day. Ben-Amotz says that Seambiotic shipped approximately three tons of algae belonging to genus Nannochloropsis to biofuel manufacturers in 2008. But even this quantity of algal biomass does not yield one million gallons of biofuel per day-not even close. Ben-Amotz says that his algal cells typically contain 30% oil per gram of biomass, so 3 tons would only yield slightly more than 816,466 grams (or approximately 235 gallons) of algal oil, which could yield approximately 100-200 gallons of biofuel. "I could ship 500 gallons tomorrow if someone wanted to buy it." -Harrison Dillon
With the help of seawater and free carbon dioxide from Israeli Electric Company smokestacks, Ben-Amotz says that Seambiotic's only limitation to increasing that growth rate is developing a better hydrodynamic system to churn the pond water more efficiently for proper aeration and increased algal growth rates. He's working with NASA on that one. "They got to the moon," Ben-Amotz says. "I hope they will solve the problem of water mixing!" Ben-Amotz says he thinks he can eventually achieve a growth rate of about 75g/m2/day.
Next year Ben-Amotz says that Seambiotic expects to open a new open-pond facility-again sited at an electric plant-that will likely be the largest facility for algae production in the world. It will cover 5 hectares and will provide tons of algae to different production facilities; lipids will go to biodiesel manufacturers, sugars will go to bioethanol producers, and proteins to makers of nutraceuticals. But even Ben-Amotz admits that Israel doesn't have enough land to support truly commercial-scale algae production. He says that similar facilities will need to be constructed in other countries in South and North America for that to become reality.
Eric Jarvis, a senior scientist at the US DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Col., worked on the agency's algae fuel exploration program, dubbed the Aquatic Species Program, before it was halted in 1996. Jarvis participated in a large-scale, year-long algal growth experiment in open ponds in the desert outside of Roswell, NM. He says that experiment taught him a lot about the prospect of growing algae for biofuel in such a way. "These are ecosystems, and you have to think of them in a bigger sense," he says. "It's not just a row crop, where you plant it and harvest it."
Jarvis adds that keeping algal strains confined to ponds (especially if they're genetically engineered) is just one of the challenges of outdoor algal farming. One must also be aware that alien algal strains will likely end up in open ponds, potentially throwing the system into disarray.
Al Darzins, a principal group manager at the NREL, says that the agency is currently focusing more on using living organisms to convert waste cellulose, such as that from corn stover or switch grass, into ethanol. Algae work was virtually nonexistent at NREL a few years ago, he adds, but now the agency currently devotes about $1 million of its budget to algae projects. "We should reopen the Aquatic Species Program," he says.
Darzins says that the scientists working on the Aquatic Species Program were the first to clone the gene for Acetyl CoA Carboxylase (ACCase), an enzyme that functions in lipid production, and insert that gene into the algae Cyclotella cryptica. The close-out report published by the DOE after the conclusion of the program, which many in the algal oil business refer to as "The Algal Bible," identified the ACCase gene as a key player in algae's oil synthesis. With the gene in hand, researchers working on the program even patented it and managed to coax algal cells into over-expressing ACCase. "These early experiments did not, however, demonstrate increased oil production in the cells," the report reads. Says Darzins, "It was a good shot in the dark, but it was a shot in the dark, nonetheless."
'm behind the wheel of a white Jeep Liberty Diesel, driving around the broad streets of South San Francisco. A colorful corporate logo blares "Solazyme" across the side of the vehicle. The car feels like any other diesel car or truck. Turn the key, the engine rumbles to life and the motor growls under the hood. But this Jeep is different. In the gas tank is a fuel produced completely by genetically engineered algae: A pure biofuel. Riding shotgun is Harrison Dillon, a microbial geneticist who is now president, chief technology officer, and cofounder of biofuel company Solazyme. "When we drive this thing down the street in downtown San Francisco, people cheer," says Dillon with a wide grin.
Dillon started Solazyme with some colleagues in 2003 ("when oil was cheap," he says), and kept a culture collection of a couple hundred Chlamydomonas strains in his own low-tech facility. "We bought the growth media, sterilized it in my kitchen, and stored it in the garage," he remembers. Cargill's evaporation ponds concentrate salt and algae.
Courtesy of Cargill
They tried to grow the algae in outdoor ponds, but quickly realized that the productivity of the algae was nowhere near high enough to yield appreciable amounts of fuel. So they switched to heterotrophic species of algae, which directly consume carbon-based compounds rather than passively absorbing carbon dioxide from surrounding media. "That's when the technology just took off," Dillon recalls. "It really went exponential." The advantage of using heterotrophic algae, according to Dillon, is that they are bathed in their energy source; as opposed to photosynthetic species, which must jockey for a good sunbathing position among millions of their kin.
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While Solazyme's exact species and strains of algae are a closely guarded secret, Dillon assures that the company uses several obscure strains as their workhorses. "You're lucky if you can get 10 papers to come up on PubMed that name them," he smiles. "We look at algae that have been isolated from all over the world," from Irish peat bogs to equatorial swamps. For feedstock, Solazyme's algae eat anything from waste glycerol and sugar cane to sugar beet pulp and molasses. "You can use just about anything," Dillon says, as long as the feedstock is high-volume and low-cost.
Dillon says that Solazyme's algae produce some hydrocarbons, but mostly triacylglycerides. To make their biodiesel, the company takes the glyceride backbones from these fats and adds methanol. To get renewable diesel, they take that fatty acid methyl ester and "hydrotreat" it, stripping off oxygens and saturating the molecule with hydrogens. That gives them a straight-chain alkane, not much different from the diesel that flows from gas pumps into millions of diesel engines everyday across America. In nature, algal cells are rarely above 30% oil. Yields of 50-60% oil per gram of dry weight of algal cells are considered excellent. Solazyme's algae, however, stores 75% oil per gram of dry weight. "We have incredibly good scientists here," Dillon says.
olazyme is most strikingly different from its competitors for the fact that its organisms produce not just transportation fuels, but also other consumer products-a way to diversify their business and leverage high-cost goods against the low price bar set for fuels. On a table in the company's boardroom sit about 10 jars of cosmetic goops and nutriceutical concoctions. I tentatively dip the tip of my finger into what Dillon calls Solazyme's "olive oil," and bring it reluctantly to my lips. Though my mother's Italian ancestors would be rolling in their graves at calling this stuff olive oil, it was edible.
Dillon says that he expects Solazyme to be producing algal biofuel at "demonstration levels of tens to thousands of gallons" per day by 2009, and aims to be producing its fuel products at commercial levels by 2011. "The scalability is not something that frightens me too much," he says.
"A big basic strategy of ours is to fit into existing infrastructure at every step of the way." Using large-scale fermentation tanks that currently churn out a wide variety of microbially-produced products-nutriceuticals, amino acids (lysine) for animal feeds, carpet fibers, components of infant formula, and laundry detergent enzymes-Solazyme hopes to fill existing petroleum pipelines with their diesel, which can run in unmodified diesel engines. "We were the first company to walk into a major oil company conference room with a barrel of microbially-produced oil," Dillon crows. "I could ship 500 gallons tomorrow if someone wanted to buy it."
1. A Dream for Generations to Come True The idea of building a gigantic dam in the Three Gorges area to harness the Yangtze River is not new. More than seventy year ago, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, pioneer of the Chinese democratic revolution, first proposed that a Yangtze Three Gorges Project be constructed. Later, numerous experts conducted investigations on and preparatory work for the project. But because of historic reasons and lack of resources, the development of the project remained only a dream. Since the founding of the People? Republic of China in 1949, the project was back on the agenda. After meticulous feasibility studies by experts, it was finally concluded that the merits of the project far overweigh its demerits. On April 3, 1992, the National People? Congress approved the construction of the project. The Three Gorges Project has its main benefits in flood control, power generation and navigation.
Historically, the population in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River suffered tremendous losses from flooding both in human lives and property. In 1931 alone, as a result of flooding, 333 thousand hectares of cultivated land were stricken, 145 thousand people were drowned.
Currently, 15 million people and 1.6 million hectares of land along the Jingjiang section of the Yangtze River are serious threatened by flooding. Once the project? reservoir with a flood control storage of 22.1 billion cubic meters is completed, the project can raise flood control capacity from the present 10-year frequency to 100-year frequency.
With its total installed capacity of 18,200 MW, the Three Gorges Hydropower Station will generate 84.7 billion KWH a year, one-ninth of the national total generated power.
Thirdly, the project will enable 10,000-ton towboats to sail up-stream as far as Chongqing. The Yangtze? navigation capacity will thus be increased from 10 million to 50 million tons a year with the cost lowered by 35%-37%.
2. Problems to Be Resolved
The project also presents daunting problems which should be properly handled and solved to avoid any possible undesired impacts. These include resettlement of population, environmental protection, fund raising, etc.
About 1 million people will be relocated owing to the construction of the project. The government has attached great importance to the issue and decided to appropriate large sums of money for the resettlement program. The guiding principle of the program is that the life of the relocatees can only be improved. For this purpose, the government has adopted development-oriented resettlement, in other words, to combine resettlement with local economic development. The relocatees find higher-paying jobs in the newly set up businesses, which are usually located within the same country or city. Therefore, they feel quite at home and enjoy a better living in their new homes.
There has been concern about possible negative impacts on the environment by the project both at home and abroad.
This issue has been given very serious consideration and numerous measures have been taken to ensure environmental protection. For instance, the project construction will affect the habitats of Chinese river dolphin and Chinese sturgeon. So, the present protection areas and artificial breeding fields for them will be further perfected. It is not insignificant that the project will supply clean energy, replacing the burning of 50 million tons of raw coal annually. According to calculations, the discharge into the atmosphere of 100 million tons of carbon dioxide, 1.2-2 million tons of sulphur-dioxide, 10,000 tons of carbon monoxide, along with large amount of flying dust will be drastically reduced. 44 historical relics will be affected by the project construction and measures will be taken for their protection. For example, the White Crane Backbone, an ancient identification record of dry seasons in the history will be relocated. The Sibaozhai in ZhongxianCounty and the QuyuanTemple whose foundations are to be submerged will be well protected from water-logging.
By the year 2009 when the project is completed, the total investment for the project will amount to US $28 billion. The funds for the project come from four sources: the Three Gorges Construction Funds, power revenues from the existing Gezhouba Hydropower Plant, power revenues from the Three Gorges Project starting from the year 2003 and loans and credits from the State Development Bank. In spite of the above sources, it is estimated that there exists a fund gap of $7.1 billion. This gap will be made up through domestic loans, export credits, overseas commercial loans and bond issuing, etc. As the project construction lasts 17 years and funding comes from multiple sources, fund raising does not present a difficult problem. The funding of the project has been smooth and no shortage of money has so far affected the progress of the project.
3. Progress in the Project
After the resolution on the Three Gorges Project was adopted in 1992, the State Council immediately started preparations for the project. On December 14, 1994, the Chinese government announced its formal commencement. The construction has proceeded smoothly since then. By the end of 1995, a total investment of 12.4 billion yuan ($ 1.55 billion) was made and 100 million cubic meters of earth and stone on excavation, 1.63 million cubic meters of concrete works and 220,000 square meters of building works had been completed. The implementation of the construction of the project has been executed on or ahead of schedule. All this is preparatory work for the first major goal of the project - the Yangtze River blocking in November 1997 and also for the consequent stage of the operation of the first generator set in 2003 and the completion of the whole project in 2009.
The Chinese government and people are confident that, relying mainly on their own efforts and also through international cooperation, they will successfully build up the Three Gorges Project.
Three Gorges Dam: worth the costs?
- Friday, March 14th, 2008 by Alya Aziz-Zaman
In 1919, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the political revolutionary known as the “Father of Modern China,” envisioned a massive hydroelectric dam spanning the Yangtze River. After several attempts at construction throughout the twentieth century, all of which were halted for political or economic reasons, construction on the dam began in earnest in 1994 and was projected to be completed by 2009. Today, setbacks and additions have moved the dam’s full operation to 2011, and despite grave social and environmental concerns, the project—known as the Three Gorges Dam—is too far along to be stopped.
Stretching 1.5 miles wide, 600 feet high and 400 miles long, the dam already occupies such a large expanse of land that it is more visible from space than any river. The Chinese government claims that the dam will solve so many economic issues that the benefits will outweigh any problems it might cause.
Ocean freighters will be able to access the country’s interior for six months out of the year, which will stimulate the agricultural and manufacturing industries located there. The electricity generated by the dam will be equivalent to 18 nuclear power plants. And, hopefully, the dam’s presence will help curb the Yangtze River’s devastating floods that have plagued the region for millennia.
Anything that ends repeated flooding and offers an alternative to coal-burning power seems like a promising endeavor. However, the cons of the Three Gorges Dam raise questions as to how, in an age of increasing social and environmental awareness, its construction has been allowed to continue without serious modifications.
Journalist Steven Mufson of the Washington Post calls the Three Gorges Dam “a vision that combines ambition worthy of pyramid-building Pharaohs with the destructiveness of open-pit coal mining.” Like mining and other economically lucrative projects with devastating results, the Three Gorges Dam could be a kind of twenty-first century Titanic: an overzealous declaration of technological progress.
The most publicized concerns regarding the dam are environmental. In addition to the possibility of pollutants building up behind the dam and contaminating the region’s water supply, wildlife is also threatened by the construction of the dam. The entire area had to be logged before construction could begin, destroying valuable habitats. Construction of the dam has already contributed to the near extinction of several species, including the Baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, and the critically endangered Siberian crane. Additionally, the buildup of silt in the reservoir may threaten aquatic biodiversity and lead to sinking and erosion of coastal areas.
According to CNN.com, journalist Dai Qing, who was thrown in jail for ten months after criticizing construction of the dam in 1989, calls the project “the most environmentally and socially destructive project in the world.” She proposes using tributaries of the Yangtze to create smaller, less damaging projects that might accomplish some of the same energy goals as the Three Gorges Dam.
But perhaps even worse than the potential environmental damage is the potential human cost of the project. As many as 1.4 million Chinese residents have already been displaced as a result of the project, with four million more expected to be relocated in the next 10 to 15 years. The dam will also completely submerge 1,300 valuable historical and archeological sites such as the burial grounds of the ancient Ba people.
Worst of all, despite the regular floods the dam could prevent, if the dam itself were to break, the entire Yangtze delta would become flooded, possibly taking millions of lives. Those lives would also be at risk, critics have mentioned, if China became engaged in war. The dam would undoubtedly be the first and most destructive target.
These are only hypothetical consequences. Real consequences, however, are already evident in the areas surrounding the dam. In the hurry to put such massive technology into action, it is clear that shortcuts in both construction and design have been taken. Geologists have found water seeping out of the reservoir into the ground, the banks of the reservoir have been weakened by enormous pressure changes and fatal landslides have increased dramatically in the region.
Whether the most significant problems that arise out of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam are human, environmental or both, the dam represents the kind of overextended display of human innovation that usually results in unforeseen consequences—only this time those consequences are well within our sights, and they are downright frightening.
Corruption, sloppy construction, lack of foresight into environmental consequences and disregard for human life have all contributed to the construction of this dam. Of course we need alternative energy, but the purpose of the Three Gorges Dam is not to reduce CO2 emissions, it’s to power China’s booming economy.
As with many dams, there is a debate over costs and benefits. Although there are economic benefits such as flood control, clean hydroelectricity and navigation, there are also concerns about the relocation of people, siltation, loss of archaeological and cultural sites and the impact on regional ecosystem.[3]
Project history
In his poem "Swimming" (1956), engraved on the 1954 Flood Memorial in Wuhan, Mao Zedong envisions "walls of stone" to be erected upstream.[4]
The dam was originally envisioned by Sun Yat-sen in The International Development of China in 1919.[5] In 1932 the Nationalist government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, began preliminary work on plans for a dam in the Three Gorges. Then in 1939 the Japanese military forces occupied Yichang and surveyed the area. A design, the Otani plan, was completed for the dam in anticipation of a Japanese victory over China.[6] In 1944 involvement from the United States began when the Bureau of Reclamation engineer J.L. Savage surveyed the area and drew up a dam proposal. Around 54 Chinese engineers were sent to the U.S. for training. Some exploration, survey, economic study, and design work was done, but the government, in the midst of the Chinese Civil War, halted work in 1947.[7]
During the 1980s plans were revived. Pushed through by Li Peng, the dam was approved by the National People's Congress in 1992 with a record number of abstentions and dissenting votes.[citation needed] The construction started on December 14, 1994.[9] The dam was expected to be fully operational in 2009, but due to additional projects such as the underground power plant with 6 additional generators, and due to the complexity of the ship lift, the dam is not expected to become fully operational until about 2011.[8] The dam will raise the water level the third time to its designed maximum water level (175 m above sea level) by the end of 2008.[10]
Map of the location of the Three Gorges Dam, Sandouping, Yichang, Hubei Province, China and major cities along the Yangtze River.
Scale of the project
The dam wall is made of concrete and is about 2,309 metres (7,575 ft) long, and 101 metres (331 ft) high. The wall is 115 metres (377.3 ft) thick on the bottom and 40 metres (131.2 ft) thick on top. The project used 27,200,000 cubic metres (35,600,000 cu yd) of concrete, 463,000 tonnes of steel, enough to build 63 Eiffel Towers, and moved about 102,600,000 cubic metres (1.342E+8 cu yd) of earth.[11]
When the water level is maximum at 175 metres (574 ft) over sea level (91 metres (299 ft) above river level), the reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam is about 660 kilometres (410 mi) in length and 1.12 kilometres (0.70 mi) in width on average, and contains 39.3 km3 (9.4 cu mi) of water.The total surface area of the reservoir is 1045 km². The reservoir will flood a total area of 632 km² of land compared to the 1,350 km² of reservoir created by the Itaipu Dam.[12]
When finished, the project will have cost 180 billion yuan, over 20 billion yuan less than the initial estimated budget of 203.9 billion yuan, just under 30 billion USD. This is because the calculation accounts for the effect of inflation, and the lower costs are attributed to a low inflation rate in recent years.[13] Until the end of 2008, the total investment reached 148.365 billion yuan, among which, 64.613 billion yuan on construction, 68.557 billion yuan on the relocation of affected residents and 15.195 billion yuan was spent on the interests of financing.[14] It is estimated that the cost of construction will be recovered when the dam has generated 1000 TWh of electricity, which is estimated to sell for 250 billion yuan. Cost recovery is expected to occur ten years after the dam starts full operation.[5]
Sources for funding include the Three Gorges Dam Construction Fund, profits from the Gezhouba Dam, policy loans from the China Development Bank, loans from domestic and foreign commercial banks, corporate bonds, and revenue from Three Gorges Dam before and after it is fully operational, with additional charges for electricity contributing to the Three Gorges Construction Fund. The additional charges are as follows: Every province receiving power from the Three Gorges Dam has to pay an additional charge of ¥7.00 per MWh. Provinces that will not receive power from the Three Gorges Dam have to pay an additional charge of ¥4.00 per MWh. Tibet does not have to pay any additional money.[15]
Hydroelectricity generation and distribution
Total generating capacity
Electricity production in China by source. Compare: The fully completed Three Gorges dam will contribute about 100 TWh of generation per year. thermofossil hydroelectric nuclear
The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest hydro-electric power station by total capacity, which will be 22,500 MW.[5] It will have 34 generators. 32 will be main generators, each with a capacity of 700 MW, and the other 2 will be plant power generators, each with capacity of 50 MW. Among those 32 main generators, 14 of them are installed in the north side of the dam, 12 in the south side and the remaining 6 in the underground powerplant in the mountain south of the dam. After completion, the expected annual electricity generation will be over 100 TWh,[16] 18% more than the originally predicted 84.7 TWh, since 6 generators were added in 2002.
Generators
Each of the main generators weighs about 6000 tonnes and are designed to produce at least 700 MW of power. The designed head of the generator is 80.6 m. The flow rate varies between 600 m3/s to 950 m3/s depending on the head available. The Three Gorges Dam project installs Francis turbines. The diameter of the turbine is 9.7/10.4 m (VGS design/Alstom's design). It rotates at a speed of 75 rpm. The normal rated power of the generator is 778 MVA. The maximum power is 840 MVA. The power factor is 0.9. The generator produces electrical power at 20 kV. The outer diameter of the generator stator is 21.4/20.9 m. The inner diameter is 18.5/18.8 m. The height of the stator is 3.1/3 m. It is the biggest stator in the world. The load at the bearing is 5050/5500 tonnes. The average efficiency of the generators is over 94%, and the highest is 96.5%.[17]
The generators are manufactured by two joint ventures. One of them includes Alstom, ABB, Kvaerner and the Chinese company Haerbin Motor. The other includes Voith, General Electric, Siemens (abbreviated as VGS), and the Chinese company Oriental Motor. The technology transfer agreement was signed together with the contract. More than 8 of the 32 generators are made in China. Most of the generators are water-cooled. Some newer ones are air-cooled, which are simpler in design,manufacture and easier to maintain.[18]
Generator installation progress
The 14 generators in the north side of the dam have already been installed. The first one (No.2 ) started to power on July 10, 2003. The last one (No.9) started to power on September 7, 2005. All of the 14 generators first ran to full power (9800 MW) on October 18, 2006 after the water level had been raised to 156 m.[19]
The 12 generators in the south side of the dam have already been installed.The first generator (No. 22) in the south side of the dam started working on June 11, 2007. The last generator (No. 15) on the south side of the dam was completed and brought to the power grid on Oct.30, 2008.[1] The sixth generator in the south side (No. 17) started working on December 18, 2007. It brought the total capacity of the dam to 14.1 GW, surpassing the generating capacity of Itaipu (14.0 GW), to become the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. The seventh generator in the south side (No. 17) started working on December 27, 2007. The eighth generator in the south side (No. 24) started working on April 25, 2008.[20]
The ninth generator in the south side (No. 19) started working on June 18, 2008.[21] The tenth generator in the south side (No. 16) started working on July 2, 2008.[22] The eleventh generator in the south side (No. 23) started working on August 19, 2008.[23] The total capacity of the plant is currently at 18.30 GW.
Added to the project in 2002, the underground power plant and its six generators are still under construction.[24][25]
Total energy generated
As of October 30, 2008 the Three Gorges Dam Project had generated over 274.4 TWh of electricity, more than one quarter of the 1000 TWh it needs to generate to cover the cost (see Economics section).[26] With 18,300 MW installed capacity, the generation capacity of the Three Gorges Dam Project is about 4,300 MW more than that of the Itaipu Dam. In July 2008, the Three Gorges Dam generated 10.3 TWh of electricity, the first time it has generated more than 10 TWh in a month.[27]
The electricity generated by the Three Gorges Dam project was sold to the State Grid Corporation and China Southern Power Grid at a flat rate of ¥250 per MWh ($35.7 US) until July 2, 2008. The price of electricity now is different depending on which province is sold to, ranging from ¥230.6 per MWh to ¥311.1 per MWh.[29] Nine provinces and two cities consume the power from it, including Shanghai.[30]
The power distribution and transmission of the Three Gorges Dam project cost about 34.387 billion Yuan. It was completed in December 2007, one year ahead of time.[31]
Power is sent in three directions. The 500 kV DC transmission line to the East China Grid has a capacity of 7,200 MW. There are three 500 kV DC transmission lines: HVDC Three Gorges-Shanghai (3,000 MW), HVDC Three Gorges-Changzhou (3,000 MW) and HVDC Gezhouba - Shanghai (1,200 MW). The 500 kV AC transmission line to Central China Grid has a capacity of 12,000 MW. The other 500 kV DC transmission line HVDC Three Gorges-Guangdong to South China Grid has a capacity of 3,000 MW and supplies Guangdong.[32]
In the original plan, it was expected to provide 10% of electricity consumption in China. However, China’s demand for electricity has increased at a higher rate than was planned, and if fully operational now, it would support about 3% of the total electricity consumption in China.[33]
Environmental contribution of the dam
Direct reduction of air pollutant and greenhouse gas emission
According to The National Development and Reform Commission of China, it takes 366 grams of coal to generate 1 kWh of electricity in China(2006).[34] Therefore, the Three Gorges Dam will potentially reduce the coal consumption by 31 million tonnes per year, cutting the emission of 100 million tonnes of greenhouse gas,[35] millions of tonnes of dust, 1 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide, 370 thousand tonnes of nitric oxide, 10 thousand tonnes of carbon monoxide and a significant amount of mercury into the atmosphere.[36] The elimination of the fossil fuel also reduces the energy consumption in mining, washing and transporting about 31 million tonnes of coal from northern China to the load centre in south and east China.
Since the dam started generating power on July 10, 2003, total power production is equivalent to 84 million tonnes of standard coal and reduces carbon dioxide emission by 190 million tonnes, sulfur dioxide by 2.29 million tonnes and nitroxides by 980,000 tonnes.[37]
Reduction of greenhouse gas due to navigation
From 2004 to 2007 a total of 198 million tonnes of goods passed through the Three Gorges Dam ship locks. The freight capacity of the river increased 6 times and the cost of shipping reduced by 25%, compared to previous years, which reduces carbon dioxide emission by 630,000 tonnes. Comparing to highway transportation, the amount of fuel that Three Gorges Dam project saved between the year of 2004 and 2007 is equivalent to 4,100,000 tonnes of standard coal. Thus it reduces carbon dioxide emission by 10 million tonnes.[37]
Waste management
Since the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, many waste water treatment plants have been completed to reduce the water pollution from the large populated city Chongqing and the suburban area around it. According to the ministry of environmental protection of PRC, until April 2007, there were more than 50 waste water treatment plants installed and the total capacity reached 1.84 million tonnes per day. More than 65% of the waste water is treated before being dumped into the Three Gorges Dam reservoir. About 32 land sites deposit were completed and could handle 7664.5 tonnes of solid waste every day.[38][39]
Reforestation
The Three Gorges Dam pushes the Chinese government to think seriously about the environmental issues associated with the dam, such as deforestation and water pollution.[citation needed] “The FAO’s research suggests that the Asia-Pacific region will, overall, gain about 6,000 square km of forest in 2008. That is quite a turnaround from the 13,000 square km net loss of forest each year in the 1990s. The main reason is China’s huge reforestation effort. This accelerated after terrible floods in 1998 convinced the government that it must restore tree cover, especially in the mighty Yangtze’s basin” upstream of the Three Gorges Dam.[40]
Flood control and drought relief
The most significant function of the dam is to control flooding, which is a major problem of a seasonal river like the Yangtze. Millions of people live downstream of the dam, and many large and important cities like Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai lie next to the river. Plenty of farm land and the most important industrial area of China are built beside the river.
The reservoir's flood storage capacity is 22 km3(18 million acre feet). This capacity will reduce the frequency of major downstream flooding from once every 10 years to once every 100 years. With the dam, it is expected that major floods can be controlled. If a "super" flood comes, the dam is expected to minimize its effect.[5]
In 1954 the river flooded 193,000 km2 (74,518 sq mi) of land, killing 33,169 people and forcing 18,884,000 people to move. The flood covered Wuhan, a city with 8 million people, for over three months, and the Jingguang Railway was out of service for more than 100 days.[5] In the event of a recurrence of the 1954 flood that carried 50 billion m3 of water, the Three Gorges Dam could only divert the water above Chenglingji, still leaving 30 to 40 billion m3 of flood water to be diverted.[41] Also the dam will not protect the large tributaries such as the Xiangjiang, Zishui, Yuanshui, Lishui, Hanjiang, and Ganjiang from flooding, due to the location of the dam.
In 1998 a flood in the same area caused billions of dollars in damage. The Chinese government asked for support from its military to fight the flooding. 2039 square kilometers of farm land was flooded. The flood affected more than 2.3 million people, and 1,526 were killed.[42]
The Dam discharges its reservoir during the dry season between December and March every year.[43] This increases the flow rate of the river downstream, and provides more fresh water for agricultural and industrial usage. It also improves the navigation conditions during dry season. The water level upstream drops from 175 m to 145 m,[44] leaving room for the flooding season. This also increases the power output of the Gezhouba Dam downstream.
Navigation
Ship locks for river traffic to bypass the Three Gorges Dam, May 2004
The installation of ship locks is intended to increase river shipping from 10 million to 100 million tonnes annually, with transportation costs cut by 30 to 37%. Shipping will become safer, since the gorges are notoriously dangerous to navigate.[37] Each of the two ship locks is made up of 5 stages taking around 4 hours in total to complete and have a capacity of 10,000 tons.[45] Critics argue, however, that heavy siltation will clog ports such as Chongqing within a few years based on the evidence from other dam projects.
The locks are designed to be 280 m long, 35 m wide, and 5 m deep (918 x 114 x 16.4 ft).[46][47] That is 30 m longer than those on the St Lawrence Seaway, but half as deep. Before the dam was constructed, the maximum freight capacity of the river at the Three Gorges site was 18.0 million tonnes per year. From year 2004 to 2007, there were total of 198 million tonnes of freight passed through the Three Gorges Dam ship locks. The freight capacity of the river increased 6 times and the cost of shipping reduced by 25%, comparing to the previous years. The total capacity of the ship locks is expected to reach 100 million tonnes.[37]
In addition to the canal locks, the Three Gorges Dam will be equipped with a ship lift, a kind of elevator for vessels.[48] The ship lift is designed to be capable of lifting ships of up to 3,000 tons.[49][50][51] In the original plan its capacity was to be 10,000 tons. The ship lift was not yet complete when the rest of the project was officially opened on May 20, 2006.[52][53] Construction of the ship lift started in October 2007 and is anticipated to be completed in the year 2014.[54]
Relocation of local residents
During the planning stages in the 1990s it was estimated that 1.13 million residents would be forced to relocate; the final number (as of June 2008) ended up with 1.24 million after the last town called Gaoyang in HubeiProvince was relocated.[55][56] This number is about 1.5% of the total population of Hubei Province (60.3 million) and Chongqing City (31.44 million) where the reservoir is located.[57] About 140,000 residents were relocated out of Hubei province to eastern provinces and some central provinces, and the majority of the remaining people were relocated within HubeiProvince.[58] The relocation project was completed on July 22, 2008.[56] On October 11, 2007 Chinese state media announced that under a development plan of Chongqing city, an additional 4 million people will be encouraged to move from their homes near the dam to the Chongqing metropolitan area by the year 2020.[59][60][61]
There have been accusations of corruption over money sent to the town of Gaoyang for the purpose of relocation for 13,000 farmers. The money disappeared after it was sent to the local government, and residents were denied compensation.[62]
Of the 3,000 to 4,000 remaining critically endangeredSiberian Crane, a large number currently spend the winter in wetlands that will be destroyed by the Three Gorges Dam. The dam also contributed to the functional extinction of the Baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin. In addition, populations of the Yangtze sturgeon are guaranteed to be "negatively affected" by the dam. There are high levels of pollution currently in the Yangtze. Over one billion tons of wastewater are released annually into the river.[63] The dam will significantly decrease the river's flushing capacity and the pollution ratings will increase. For the current amount of pollution, there is an estimated cost of 2.8 billion Yuan to clean the river[citations needed].
While logging in the area was required for construction[citations needed]which adds to erosion, stopping the periodic and uncontrolled flooding of the river will lessen bank erosion in the long run. The build up of silt in the reservoir will, however, reduce the amount of silt transported by the Yangtze River to the Yangtze Delta and could reduce the effectiveness of the dam for electricity generation and, perhaps more importantly, the lack of silt deposited in the peninsula could result in erosion and sinking of coastal areas.
Effect on local culture and aesthetic values
The 600 kilometer (375 mi) long reservoir has flooded or will flood some 1,300 archaeological sites and will alter the appearance of the Three Gorges as the water level rises over one hundred meters at various locations.[64] Cultural and historical relics are being moved to higher ground as they are discovered but the flooding of the Gorge will undoubtedly cover some undiscovered relics. Some other sites cannot be moved because of their location, size or design. For example the hanging coffins site high in the Shen Nong Gorge is inherently part of the sheer cliffs themselves.[65]
Sedimentation
There are two hazards uniquely identified with the dam.[66] One is that sedimentation projections are not agreed upon, and the other is that the dam sits on a seismic fault.
The Three Gorges area currently has 10% forestation, down from 20% in the 1950s. At current levels 80% of the land in the area is experiencing erosion causing about 40 million tons of sediment to slide into the Yangtze annually.[63] The relocation of people from the reservoir area will cause further deforestation and erosion due to agricultural needs.
Excessive sedimentation can block the sluice gates which can cause dam failure under some conditions. This was a contributing cause of the Banqiao Dam failure in 1975 that precipitated the failure of 61 other dams and resulted in over 20,000 deaths. Critics believe that the Yangtze will add 530 million tons of silt into the reservoir on average per year; in time, this silt could accumulate behind the walls of the dam, clogging the turbines' entranceway. However, because China has begun constructing four other megadams (see below) on the upstream of Yangtze since 2006, the sedimentation from upstream would be much less than originally predicted. But the absence of silt down stream would still have two dramatic effects:
Some hydrologists think that this could make downstream riverbanks more vulnerable to flooding.[citation needed]
The city of Shanghai, more than one thousand miles (1600 km) away from the dam, rests on a massive plain of sediment. The "arriving silt -- so long as it does arrive -- strengthens the bed on which Shanghai is built... the less the tonnage of arriving sediment the more vulnerable is this biggest of Chinese cities to inundation..."[67]
The Benthic sediment build up is a cause of biological damage and reduction in aquatic biodiversity.[68]
National security concerns
In an annual report to the United States Congress, the Department of Defense cited that in Taiwan, “proponents of strikes against the mainland apparently hope that merely presenting credible threats to China’s urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, will deter Chinese military coercion.”[69]
In order to maximize the utility of the Three Gorges Dam and cut down on sedimentation from the Jinsha, a tributary of the Yangtze river, China plans to build a series of dams upstream of the Yangtze river, including Wudongde Dam, Baihetan Dam, Xiluodu Dam, Xiangjiaba Dam, and downstream of Jinsha. The total capacity of those four dams is 38,500 MW,[71] almost double the capacity of the Three Gorges.[72] There are also another eight dams in the midstream of the Jinsha and eight more upstream of it.[73]
References in culture
In Max Brooks’ novel World War Z, the large artificial lake upstream of the dam is the site of the initial zombie outbreak before the war; a superstitious character suggests that the outbreak is a retribution for the destruction of ancient holy sites. Later in the novel, the Dam is overrun by zombie hordes, which make the emergency pressure release valves impossible to reach. This eventually results in the Three Gorges Dam rupturing, resulting in a massive tsunami which races to the ocean, destroying what remains of Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai. This results in the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War.[74][5]
In the novel Dragon Bones by Lisa See, a murder investigation takes place at the Three Gorges Dam.[75]
In the video game Civilization IV the dam is a World Wonder, providing power to the entire continent.[5]
In the video game Command & Conquer: Generals, the dam is blown up by both the Chinese government and a terrorist organization under plot lines. (It is first blown up by the Chinese as a desperate effort to drown the terrorists with the water behind the dam, while the terrorists blow up a rebuilt dam to flood the Chinese.) The series is banned in China.[5]
Yung Chang's 2007 award-winning documentary film, Up the Yangtze features the effects of the dam on various people along the Yangtze River[5]
Artists David Kelley and Patty Chang's video installation, "Flotsam Jetsam", features actors from a local Chinese Opera troupe performing on board an American Nuclear Submarine that is passing through the Three Gorges Dam to the reservoir up river. The sub's journey becomes an imaginative performance exploring identity, space and memory.
"Kilowatt Dynasty," 2000, is a video by London-based Dutch artist Saskia Olde Wolbers. The fictional work is narrated by an Anglo-Chinese girl whose parents meet in an underwater shopping center constructed entirely of glass. The mother is the hostesses of a teleshopping program that shoots on location; the father is a radical environmentalist who kidnaps her.
Biggest Flood Control Benefit in the World
Although the TGP Reservoir is not the reservoir with the biggest capacity in the world, its reserved flood control capacity can help cut flood peak by 27,000 ～ 33,000 m3/s, the biggest for a water conservancy project in the world.
When the TGP is completed, the flood control standard of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, especially the Jingjiang Section, will be largely upgraded from the present level of preventing under-10-year floods to that of preventing 100-year floods. So 15 million people and 1.5 million hectares of farmland in the Jianghan Plain are relieved from flood threats, and devastating plagues of massive death caused by big floods are avoided.
Floods records of Yangtze River (1931, 1935, 1949, 1954, and 1998)
1931....
The flood in 1931 struck an area of 130,000 km2 with 3.39 million ha farmland and 1.8 million houses inundated, 28.55 million people affected, and 145,000 people killed, causing approximately an economic loss of 1.345 billion YinYuan.
1935....
The flood in 1935 hit an area of 89,000 km2 in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, with six provinces, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and 10 million people affected, 1.51 million ha of farmland inundated, 142,000 people killed, causing approximately an economic loss of 0.355 billion YinYuan.
1949....
The flood in 1949 inundated 1.81 million ha farmland, affected 8.1 million people and cost the lives of 5699 people in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
1954....
The damages caused by the flood in 1954 in the middle and lower reaches: totally 3.18 million ha farmland and 4.27 million houses inundated, 18.884 million people and 123 counties and cities affected, 33169 people killed and the interruption of the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway for 100 days.
1998....
The flood in 1998 struck a large area of the YangtzeValley. The country went all out to fight against the flood for nearly 3 months with large quantities of people and materials employed. More than RMB 13 billion worth of flood-fighting materials were dispatched from all around the country, and about 6.7 million people and hundred thousands of soldiers took part in the fighting. However, the flood still caused great losses with 239,000 ha farmland inundated, 2.316 million people affected and 1526 people killed in the four provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui.
Remarkable Power Generation Benefit
The Three Gorges Hydropower Plant (TGHP) contains twenty-six turbine-generator units, each with installed capacity of 700MW, not including the six more 700MW units in the Right Bank Underground Powerhouse under construction. Its total installed capacity amounts to 18200MW, and its expected annual average power generation accounts up to 84.7 TWH, so the TGHP ranks the biggest one in the world with remarkable power generation benefit. At present, TGHP electricity is sent unceasingly to Central China, East China, Guangdong, and Chongqing with the maximum transmission range of 1000 Km.
Major Parameters of the TGHP units and abroad power plants
Parameters
Three Gorges Project CHINA
Grand Coulee U.S.A.
Itaipu Brazil/Paraguay
Guri Venezuela
Krasnoyarsk Russia
Turbine
Maximum Head(m)
113.0
108.2
126.7
146
100.5
Rated Head(m)
80.6
86.9
112.9
130
93
Minimum Head(m)
71.0(61.0)
67.0
82.9
111
76
Rated Output (MW)
710
612/716
715
610
508
Maximum Output(MW)
852
827
740/808
730
508(505)
Rated Spinning Speed(r/min)
75
85.7
90.9/92.3
112.5
93.8
Runner Diameter(m)
9.525(9.800)
9.86/9.22
8.45
7.163
7.5
Generator
Rated Capacity(MW)
778
718
823.6/737.0
700
500
Maximum Capacity(MW)
840
710/825.6
823.6/766
805
Frequency(Hz)
50
60
50/60
60
50
Cooling
Water Cooling of Statar
Water Cooling of Statar
Water Cooling of Statar
Air Cooling
Water Cooling of Statar
Rated Voltage(KV)
20
15
18±5%
18
15.75
Insulation Levels
F
B
F
B
Thrust Load(t)
4,050(4,100)
4,700
4,056&4,400
2,667
Inner Diameter of Stator(m)
18,500(18,800)
18,790
16,000
13,650
16,100
Its Buildings with Biggest Indices
Dam
The TGP dam is a concrete gravity one, made of 14.86 million m3 concrete, the biggest amount in the world. The maximum flood discharge capacity of the dam is 116 ,110 m3/s, biggest in the world.
Power Plant
The TGHP is of dam toe power house. The installed capacity of a unit and annual power generation of the TGHP are the biggest respectively. The transmission lines of two ±500 kV DC circuits and eleven 500 kV AC circuits are the biggest scale in the world.
Three Gorges ship lock
The following indices are the biggest in the world: total water head of 113 m, inland river ship lock of five stages, a lock chamber's effective dimension of 280 m×34 m×5 m (length × width × minimum water depth on the sill), inland river ship lock with capacity to accommodate 10000-tonnage fleets, maximum operating water head 49.5 m for a gate of its water exchange system, maximum water fill/discharge amount of 260000 m 3 , maximum side slope excavation of 170 m, in height and etc. The operating water head exceeds the world record.
Ship lift
Single-way and one-step vertical ship lift with counterweight is employed in TGP complex, consisting of upstream and downstream approach channels, upper and lower lock heads and ship chamber section with a total length of about 6000 m. The ship lock will allow a maximum 3000-tonnage ship passing through. The ship chamber has outline dimensions of 132 m (L) × 23.4 m (W) × 10 m (H) and effective water area in it is 120 m (L) × 18 m (W) × 3.5 m (D). The maximum lifting height is 113 m and total lifting weight about 12800 tons.
Compared with the ship lifts home and abroad that are built or under construction, TGP's ship loft ranks the first in the world in terms of the main technical parameters. Due to the large scale of construction, complicated operating conditions and high requirements in safety and reliability, TGP's ship lift also ranks the first among the world's ones built or under construction in terms of design, manufacture and difficult extent in construction.
The Relocation Population and Difficulty of Resettlement
According to a 1992 survey, the TGP reservoir impoundment will inundate 632 km 2 of land, including 24500 ha of farmland and citrus land, and affect habitats of 844100 people under submergence. It was planned to relocate a population of 1.13 million people. The relocation and resettlement of TGP reservoir migrants is a world record in scale and in difficulty.
Diagram of the TGP inundation area
Since the TGP was launched a decade ago, a few world records in hydropower construction were created, and a series of technology breakthrough were achieved, thanks to the continuous practice in science & technology renovation. They are outlined as follows:
River Close-off and Cofferdam in Deep Water
TGP river close-off was conducted on the main channel and the diversion channel, the difficulty is hardly seen in other water conservancy projects. The successful river close-offs on 11 November 1997 and 6 November 2002 mark that China's river close-off technology ranks among the top ones in the world.
Concrete Placement on the TGP Dam
High Slopes outside the Three Gorges Ship lock and Metal Structures
The double-way and five-step ship lock is characterized by the biggest water head, the most successive steps, the deepest excavation and the highest concreted side slope, and the highest and heaviest miter gate in the world.
The Design, Manufacture and Installation of the Generator Units
The TGP generator units have the features of large quantity, big capacity, big water head change. Due to their extremely important role in the power grid system, CTGPC has to ensure stability and efficiency of the turbines under high water head, and meanwhile, to take into account the operation performance under low water head. The installed capacity of one TGP unit is 700 MW, biggest in the world. Since the rated water head of TGP units is relatively low, the generators are designed to have maximum capacity of 840 M.VA. Therefore, the overall indices of TGP units set new world records.
River Close-off and Concrete Cut-off Wall Construction
The river close-off and the concrete cutoff wall construction are two key issues in building Phase-II rock-and-earth cofferdam.
River Close-off on the Main Channel
The TGP river close-off on the main channel features deep river, large inflow, intense construction, tight timetable, navigation during the close-off process, deep surface layer above the levee foundation, and other difficulties. The TGP dam is situated at the backwater region of the Gezhouba Reservoir, and during the close-off the maximum water depth at the riverbed was 60 m, a world record. It's crucial to prevent levee breakdown and keep the levee stable during the bank-off advance. So many hydraulic model tests, value calculations, and mechanism analysis were carried out to study this issue. The efforts led to conclusion that when water depth is reduced to 20 m, levee breakdown can be avoided. Accordingly, it was decided to adopt the program of pre-leveling, upstream single levee blocking, two directional bank-off advance, and downstream follow-up advance. Along with the gradual
inflow decrease, close-off levees successively advanced for preparation. At 3:30 pm, 8 November 1997, main channel was closed off successfully. World records were created in TGP close-off as follows: inflow of 8480 ～ 11600 m3 /s during the close-off, water depth of 60 m, and rock-and-earth dump intensity for the upstream and downstream bank-off advance in 24 hours totaling 194,000 m3 .
The main channel close-off design, and the construction technology research and practice were awarded with the first prize for national science and technology achievement in 1999.
Deep Water Cofferdam and Concrete Cutoff Wall
The TGP Phase-II cofferdam was built to guarantee the year-around construction in the foundation pit during the TGP Phase II construction period. The scale of Phase-II cofferdam construction ranks top in the world. Since the water depth reaches 60 m, approximately 2/3 of the cofferdam was constructed underwater and it's very difficult to do the work. The geological condition is complicated and not suitable for building cutoff wall. The field condition only allows taking weathered grit as fill material, so the structure is loose in underwater dumping, its physical indices is bad and deformation will develop. Therefore the construction has to be conducted within a low-water season. The biggest difficulty of the Phase-II cofferdam is the construction of concrete cutoff wall. Dumping weathered grit into deep water and building two layers of 74 m flexible concrete cutoff walls in the sand-gravel cofferdam were achieved with good quality, seepage was measured to be only 65 L/s, quite rare in similar works.
For the first time, centrifugal model test was conducted in the construction of cofferdam to define that the density of dumped grit in water depth of 60 m should be 1.75 ～ 1.85 t/ m3 , and underwater slope angle should be 27°. The critical technical problem of deep water cofferdam design was solved. And it's the first time to make use of weathered grit and construction wastes and successfully produce flexible wall material that meets design requirement of the cutoff wall of the deep water cofferdam. Advanced construction equipment and auxiliaries were manufactured to solve the problem of granite layer level difference of more than 30 m, slope level of 70° ～ 80°, bedrock with double-directional slopes, and difficulty to make trench for filling with weathered grit. A new record, monthly constructing cutoff wall of 13000 m2 , was created. During dismantling, after all-around inspection, sampling, and analysis on the cofferdam and the cutoff wall, it was proved that the survey, research, design, and construction of the cofferdam are successful and serves as a reference to similar projects.
River Close-off on the Diversion Channel
It was not easy to hold steady the fill material on the slippery riverbed formed with artificial concrete during the river close-off on the diversion channel. And it was even more difficult than that on the main channel since the inflow of 10300 m 3 /s, the water fall of 4 meters, and water running speed of 7 m/s were bigger. The constructors applied steel-framed rock cages and alloy steel nets to roughen the bottom and to increase the friction of the riverbed, so that rock barrier was formed to reduce the difficulty of close-off and to ensure the stability of the fill materials. Two parallel levees were built to take the water fall of the diversion channel, the upstream
levee holding 2/3 of the water fall, the downstream one holding 1/3. On 6 November 2002, the TGP diversion channel was successfully closed off. The event was then selected as one of the top 10 science and technology advancement news in 2002 sponsored jointly by ChinaScienceAcademy and ChinaEngineeringAcademy.
Fast Concrete Placement Technology
Total concrete placement in the TGP construction amounts to 28×10 6 m3 , its quality requirement is strict, and the construction is difficult. Advanced equipment and fast concrete placement technology were applied to ensure the quality and the timetable. Concrete placement on the TGP dam started in 1998, and for the three successive years from 1999 to 2001, annual concrete placement amounted to more than 4 ×10 6 m3 ; the total of the three years added up to 14.09×10 6 m3 ; in 2000 new world records were created as follows: annual concrete placement of 5.48×10 6 m3 , monthly concrete placement of 553500 m3 , and daily concrete placement of 22000 m3 . The reason why the concrete placement for TGP dam was conducted at such a high speed and intensity lies in the following five aspects of technology breakthroughs.
Joint Construction Technology Based on Hi-tower Flatliners
In order to ensure high quality and high intensity placement, TGP constructors abandoned traditional concepts, and optimized the allocation of resources, and selected the construction scheme of application of Hi-tower Flatliners as the main equipment and subordinate application of gantry cranes, belt cranes, and cable cranes as auxiliaries. The traditional bucket placement was changed into continuous concrete production technology. The belt conveyor sent concrete from the batching plant to hi-tower Flatliner and then directly to the placement area, combining both horizontal and vertical transportation. At the same time, five concrete batching systems were equipped to produce 2500 m3 concrete on hourly basis.
A Whole System of Technology and Management for Fast Pouring
By fully implementing concrete placement technology design, a computerized supervision and control system for concrete production, conveying and pouring was developed to realize real-time monitoring, dynamic adjustment, and optimal dispatch for the whole process of concrete construction. Meantime, computer simulation system for concrete construction was developed to address the complicated situation of concrete placement.
Raw Materials and Gradation Optimization of Concrete
By applying high-quality efficient water-reducing agent which was mixed with Grade I fly ash, water consumption for Gradation IV concrete, which was made with artificial granite aggregate, was cut from 110 kg/m 3 to about 90 kg/m3 . The approach of lower water-cement ratio and more fly ash content helped to more effectively upgrade the durability of concrete. Mid-heat dam cement 525#, which features compensation for contraction, was applied to reduce contraction and deformation of concrete and to eliminate the risk of cracks developing in the concrete.
Secondary Air Cooling Technology
With repeated tests to address the TGP characteristics and the pre-cooling requirement of concrete, secondary air cooling of aggregates were applied for the first time. The new point is to replace conventional water cooling of the ground aggregates with air cooling. Cold air closed circulating system, including the efficient cooling fan and the corresponding air feeding and distributing equipment, helps to cool down aggregate continuously.
Overall Temperature Control of the Concrete
On the basis of extensively analyzing present temperature control measures taken in the projects home and abroad, overall temperature control technology for whole process was implemented for the first time in an all-around way and at high standard and large capacity. The temperature control measures includes selecting good-quality raw materials, optimizing concrete gradation, controlling concrete exit temperature and pouring temperature, cooling with running water, surface temperature keeping, and curing with running water, and etc. Especially in summer, high-tower flatliner helps to place concrete in constraint areas of the concrete dam at high speed and intensity, which is the first practice of this kind in the world.
6252 monitoring devices of various kinds embedded in every corner of the dam indicate that deformation of the dam foundation is less than 1mm, foundation seepage is only 1/10 of the design value, and horizontal shift and stress are within the design scope, completely meeting the design requirement. The quality of the dam is excellent..
Environmental Benefit of Three Gorges Project
Three Gorges project will not only produce huge economic benefit, but also play great role in improving the ecological environment of Yangtze River areas.
First Target of Three Gorges Project is Flood Control.
The project can effectively adjust the upstream flood of Yangtze River, which will assure a flood control standard of the Jingjiang section, a downstream reach to Three Gorges of Yangtze River, arise from currently preventing 10-year flood to controlling 100-year flood. Even in case of a rare occurrence of 1000-year flood, mass damages or injuries can still be prevented. At the same time, social problems such as environmental deterioration and epidemics related to the flood or flood diversion can also be avoided. Thus the project will protect 1.5 million hectare of farmland and towns, and 15 million of people from flood damage at Jianghan Plain and DongtingLake area. And also the project will raise the reliability of flood control in the mid and lower reach of Yangtze River, relieve the sand silt of DongtingLake and create favorable conditions for dredge of the lake, and prevention and cure of the schistosomiasis epidemics in the lake area.
Three Gorges Power Plant will Provide Clean Energy.
Compared to the coal-fired power stations with equivalent electricity generation, Three Gorges Power Plant will decrease emission of 100 million tons of CO2, 2 million tons of SO2, 0.37 million tons of nitrogen oxide and a lot of waste water and solid waste. It will bring a great benign influence in improvement of environment, especially preventing acid rain and greenhouse effect in East and Central China.
Other Benefit of T hree Gorges Project
The Three Gorges reservoir, after the project is completed, will improve the weather in this area, be favorable for agriculture, and improve water quality in the mid and lower reach, which will relieve the invasion of saline tide in the river's mouth to East China Sea.
Protection of Water Quality
The reservoir has a mixed influence on the water quality of Yangtze River. Due to its adjustment, the flow in drought period will increase, which will improve the water quality and relieve the invasion of saline tide in the river's mouth to East China Sea. On the other side, the sewage discharged into the River is more than 1.35 billion tons per year nowadays, which forms a heavy pollution of the water. With the rise of water level, the flow will slow down, which is unfavorable to the pollution. Therefore, the state has increased investment to control the pollution in this area.
According to the Gazette of Ecological and Environmental Monitoring published by the State Environmental Protection Administration of China in 2002, the water quality of the Yangtze in TGP area still kept not bad in 2002, most better than or at class III, though industrial wastes directly emitted to the River Yan g tze increased by 23.8% than in 2001, the environmental quality of the project areas kept good. Environmental monitoring in 2003 indicates that overall management of water quality in TGP area has obtained made initial achievement, with a decrease ratio at class IV and increase at class II and III compared to the period before impoundment.
Possible Earthquake and Bank Stability due to the Reservoir
The possible earthquake issue due to Three Gorges reservoir has been emphasized by the government for a long time, and extensive researches have been made on the issue involved in the rock, geologic structure, osmosis, etc. A 300~800 m deep-hole earth stress observation is carried out at dam and reservoir site and the earthquake intensive observation is made on some fracture zones around the dam. According to the researches, the geologic structure is stable, and has no geological background for a future heavy earthquake.
Even after the water rises, though we can not exclude the possibility of any earthquake due to the reservoir, the possible max earthquake intensity will not exceed class VI, and will not influence most of the project buildings that are designed on the basis of a earthquake of class VII.
The earthquake monitoring indicates that earthquake activities may increase after the reservoir operates, but that of higher than class II is little, and have no damages to the reservoir area, nor to the dam that is designed to be able to withstand Class VII earthquake.
At the same time, the state adopted other engineering methods to protect the environment, to control the soil and water losses, which will decrease sediment inflow to Yangtze River, and improve the water quality.
Latest result of monitoring indicates that the content of sediment in the water has a trend of decreasing, and soil and water losses in Three Gorges area goes down at about 1% per year.
In 1918, Mr. Sun Yat-Sen suggested, in his book Strategy for State, Part II: Industrial Plans , a scheme to “improve the upstream from here”, that is, “a dam should be set here to let ships go downstream and use the water resource as power.”
In May 1945, Dr. John Lucian Savage, a famous American expert in dam construction arrived in Three Gorges and put forward his Preliminary Report on Development Plans of Three Gorges .
In Feb 1950, Changjiang Water Resource Commission, a special governmental organization, was founded for the comprehensive management of the Yangtze River.
In 1955, a comprehensive planning of Yangtze River drainage area and investigation, research and design of Three Gorges project started, and most of the job concluded in 1957.
In 26 Dec 1970, Gezhouba project was approved for construction, which started power generation in 1981, and totally completed in 1989, which can be seen as a test for the future Three Gorges project.
In Feb 1982, Qian Zhengying communicated the instructions from the central government that TGP be listed in the recent national plan. And on 24, Nov, Deng Xiaoping, the former leader of China talked of the future Three Gorges Project in a meeting that “I myself prefer to the lower dam scheme. Be determined once be assured, do not hesitate”.
In Feb- March 1989, the Leading Group for Three Gorges Project Argumentation reviewed and approved the revised Feasibility Report of Three Gorges Project with normal storage level of 175 m , which indicates that the re-argumentation of the project concluded.
On 3 rd April 1992, The Resolution to Construction of Three Gorges Project was adopted at the 5 th meeting of the Seventh People's Congress , which indicates that the project entered in to the executive process from legislative process.
On 3 January 1993, the State Council TGP Construction Committee was founded, which would include an executive office, a migrant relocation development bureau and the future China Yangtze Three Gorges Development Corporation (CTGPC).
On 2 April 1993, the State Council TGP Construction Committee defined the project management system and financing sources and approved the Regulations for TGP Migrant Relocation at the first meeting.
On 29 July 1993, the State Council TGP Construction Committee approved the Report of Preliminary Design of the Three Gorges Project forwarded by Changjiang Water Resource Commission the second committee meeting, which indicates the project entered into the overall preparation stage for construction.
On 27 Sept 1993, China Yangtze Three Gorges Development Corporation (CTGPC) was, under the authorization of the State Council, founded in Yichang, Hubei province.
On 14 Dec 1994, the Three Gorges project was officially started. On 8 Nov 1997, the river close-off succeeded, which indicates the construction target of phase I was completed. On 6 Nov 2002, the close-off of diversion channel succeeded.
On 1 st June 2003, the reservoir began its storage, the water reached at 135m on 10 June and at 139m on 5 November.
On 16 June 2003, the trial navigation of ship lock succeeded. On 18 June 2003, the ship lock started to be open to all sorts of ships.
On 10 July 2003, the first generator unit began generating and connected to power grid.
On 8 July 2004, the double-way and five-step ship lock passed acceptance by an official group (water level between 135-139m).
On 25 April 2005 , the 12 th generator unit began generating. Till 30 June 2005 , Three Gorges power plant produced totally 68.1 billion kW· h, which wields a powerful function to relieve the pressure of national electricity gap, and a big promotion to the shape of national interconnection with trans-regional transmission.
At 8:00 am8 Sept 2004, Three Gorges project experienced a flood of 60500m 3 /s, the third largest autumn flood in Ynagtze history. This is the first time the project demonstrates its function of flood control by using modernized water regime forecast and monitoring means and scientific reservoir dispatching method, which succeeded withholding a flood of 0.5 billion m 3 in the reservoir while assuring the project safety, normal construction and power generating.
Till 31 December 2004 , the ship lock had totally 13105 operations, with 101.1 thousand ships, 2.808 million of passengers and 48.076 million tons of goods passing through. Ever since it was built , the ship lock has run well without major failures and satisfied met the navigation requirement of the Yangtze navigation with cargo increased by 2/3 compared to maximum level in the history.
Three Gorges Dam, China (30°44'18" North, 111°16'27" East), crosses the Yangtze River at Sandouping, Yichang, Hubei province, China. The dam’s name refers to the majestic limestone cliffs of the Qutang, Wu, and Xiling gorges, which stretch for about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Fengjie, in Sichun province, to Yichang, in Hubei province, in China's heartland. The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world, running 6,211 kilometers (3,860 miles) from QinghaiProvince in the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea near Shanghai. The river’s watershed is massive, spanning 1,722,155 sq.km (1,070,147 sq. miles) with nearly 400 million inhabitants.
On April 3, 1992, the National People's Congress of China approved the construction of the world's largest and most controversial hydroelectric facility at Three Gorges. The reservoir began filling on June 1, 2003, and construction is scheduled to be finished by May 2006. Full power generation will be reached in 2009. There are 26 power generating units planned, each with generating capacity of 700 megawatts (MW), which should produce an average of 84.7B kilowatt-hours per year (kWh/yr) from 2008 from a total generating capacity of 18,200 gigawatts (GW). Three Gorges would then surpass the 14,000MW Itaipú dam located on the Paraná River at the Brazil/Paraguay border. The latest government figures have put a price tag of US$25 billion on the project, although other estimates put the actual cost much higher.
The reservoir is 630km long and an average of 1.3km wide, while the dam wall is 185m high and almost as deep, stretching 2.3km across the valley. About 27 million cubic meters of concrete have gone into the structure since work began; that's more than eight times as much as has been poured into the Hoover dam on the Colorado River and twice the amount of concrete in the Itaipú dam. The Three Gorges project has been engineered to store over 5 trillion gallons of water and to withstand an earthquake of 7.0 on the Richter scale.
There about 50,000 other dams on the Yangtze River, mostly along tributaries of the main river, that were built in the past 50 years to create freshwater reservoirs. The freshwater storage capacity has skyrocketed from 0.06 cubic kilometers in 1950 to 180 cubic kilometers in 2002. When the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam is full, it will add up to 40 cubic kilometers to that total.
Benefits from the Three Gorges Project
To China's leaders, the Three Gorges dam will provide a foundation for the nation’s future economic prosperity. The power will also help meet China's rapidly growing energy demand. Just as important, the transmission lines that are being developed to transport electricity from the project to the rest of the country will help to create a national grid, with the Three Gorges at its heart.
Transportation of people and goods will be greatly enhanced. The reservoir will allow 10,000-ton freighters to enter the nation's interior, which currently limits access to boats under 1,500 tons. Vessels will be able to navigate from Shanghai up to Chongqing, around 2000km from the sea. It could become an even more important transport artery if sufficient facilities are put in place to integrate cargo transport on the river with major rail and road intersections. The government and companies involved in the development of the Three Gorges dam are also keen to promote the project by developing it as a tourist attraction. Tour boats now offer trips on the reservoirs in order to allow foreign and domestic tourists to appreciate what are being advertised as ‘lofty gorges projecting peaceful lakes’.
The dam is also intended to provide major flood control benefits. Historically, the population in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River suffered tremendous losses from flooding both in human lives and property. For example, the massive flooding of the Yangtze River in 1931 caused more than 3 million deaths from flooding and starvation.
The government also notes that the dam's power generation potential of 84.7BkWh/yr is the energy equivalent of burning 50 million tons of coal or 25 million tons of crude oil. Thus, the switch to cleaner hydroelectric power would have the effect of cutting 100 million tons of carbon dioxide, up to two million tons of sulfur dioxide, ten thousand tons of carbon monoxide, 370,000 tons of nitrogen oxide, and 150,000 tons of particulates annually from the atmosphere.
Social and Environmental Concerns
Critics of the Three Gorges project argue that the project’s costs may outweigh the benefits, the latter of which have allegedly been exaggerated by the government. The Three Gorges Dam project has become a symbol of national unity and strength for the ruling communist party. As a result, critics charge that many of the controversies surrounding the project are glossed over or ignored. In an address to the engineers of the dam, then Premier Li Peng, himself a power engineer by training, said the scale of the project was proof to the world of China's newfound strength. "The damming of the Yangtze is of great political and economic significance ... It proves to the whole world the Chinese people's capability of building the world's first-rate hydroelectric project". The construction of the dam has thus become as much a celebration of Chinese nationalism and its political leadership as it is a massive power and engineering feat.
Foreign perception of the project has suffered from the reputation of its principal proponent in Beijing, Li Peng. Li, whom some historians hold responsible for the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, championed the idea of the dam to guarantee China's energy supply amid the internal political repression and international isolation that followed Tiananmen. Li was the driving force behind the approval of the project in 1992 by the National People’s Congress despite no votes or abstentions from a third of the delegates—a rare display of dissent in the Congress.
Resettlement is a major source of controversy. More than 1.2 million will have to be resettled before the Yangtze valley is submerged. Entire villages and parts of major cities have been relocated. Critics claim that those forced out of the area have not been adequately compensated, particularly as the land they lost was highly fertile. But the government insists that the scale of its compensation package demonstrates its commitment to helping those affected improve their standard of living.
Upwards of 1,000 archeological sites will be submerged beneath the reservoir. Ancestral burial grounds and centuries-old temples, fossil remains, and archeological sites dating as far back as the Paleolithic Age risk being lost from public access and scholarly pursuit if they are not unearthed and relocated before the waters rise. The government has taken measures that it claims will mitigate these losses.
There is also concern about the impact the project will have on biological diversity. The baiji dolphin, the ancient river sturgeon and the finless porpoise depend on the Yangtze for their survival. The population of Siberian cranes in PoyangLake will also be affected by the dam.
Yangtze Delta.
Sedimentation of the reservoir is also a serious challenge. The flow of the Yangtze carries with it the fifth-largest sediment discharge of any river in the world, equivalent to about 4 percent of all river-borne sediment discharged to all the oceans of the world. Sediment buildup behind the dam and throughout the reservoir would effect the overall storage capacity of the reservoir. The loss of storage capacity would directly result in a decrease in project’s flood control capability. The high rate of sediment deposit has already affected the diversion channel and is expected to compromise operation of the dam sooner and more seriously than had been anticipated.
The Yangtze River branches out into a broad estuary that stretches 655 kilometers into the East China Sea, and forms one of the largest continental shelves in the world. Over half of the Yangtze’s annual sediment load is deposited in the estuary. The health of the estuary depends on the delivery of this sediment because a significant relationship exists between intertidal wetland growth rate and riverine sediment supply. Yet, due to the Three Gorges project and other dams, the sediment accumulation rate in all reservoirs on the river has increased from close to zero in 1950 to more than 850 * 106 tons per year in 2003. This is causing erosion of the wetland habitat there, which provides nurseries for fish and resting areas for migratory birds and is considered one of the world's most important wetland ecosystems. A similar effect was seen on the NileRiver after the Aswan Dam in Egypt was completed.
Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author); Brian Black (Topic Editor). 2008. "Three Gorges Dam, China." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth September 21, 2006; Last revised September 3, 2008; Retrieved February 25, 2009]. <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Three_Gorges_Dam,_China>
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Dam 
TGP river close-off was conducted on the main channel and the diversion channel, the difficulty is hardly seen in other water conservancy projects. The successful river close-offs on 
levee holding 2/3 of the water fall, the downstream one holding 1/3. On 
Total concrete placement in the TGP construction amounts to 28×10 6 m3 , its quality requirement is strict, and the construction is difficult. Advanced equipment and fast concrete placement technology were applied to ensure the quality and the timetable. Concrete placement on the TGP dam started in 1998, and for the three successive years from 1999 to 2001, annual concrete placement amounted to more than 4 ×10 6 m3 ; the total of the three years added up to 14.09×10 6 m3 ; in 2000 new world records were created as follows: annual concrete placement of 5.48×10 6 m3 , monthly concrete placement of 553500 m3 , and daily concrete placement of 22000 m3 . The reason why the concrete placement for TGP dam was conducted at such a high speed and intensity lies in the following five aspects of technology breakthroughs. 
Compared to the coal-fired power stations with equivalent electricity generation, Three Gorges Power Plant will decrease emission of 100 million tons of CO2, 2 million tons of SO2, 0.37 million tons of nitrogen oxide and a lot of waste water and solid waste. It will bring a great benign influence in improvement of environment, especially preventing acid rain and greenhouse effect in East and 
To 
