Does Megaengineering ever work?

Oddball

Monthly Donor

Interesting stuff.

Without knowing (obviousley :eek:) much about it, to me a combination of a initialy channel to the ocean to fill the basin in combination with later diversion of freshwater into it, seem tantalizing :)
 

Oddball

Monthly Donor
Atlantropa

Regarding the Atlantropa scheeme and specialy its African seas part, there actualy excists serious plans for a diversion of the Congo River into the Chad Lake basin.

The diversion is done by daming of the Ubangi and transfering some water by tunnels. The amount of water transfered is "relativley small," just enough to recreate Lake Chad to its colonial size.

Ofcourse in combination with harrnessing Hydroelectric Power... :D

Read more about it here.
 

Hkelukka

Banned
The chinese arent stupid, but they are Communists. And that particular government form has a lousy history looking foward long enough with their mega-engineering projects.

It could be that they have planned for it appropriately, but building the worlds largest dam in one of the worlds sediemnt riches areas that is also geologically very active upstream of the largest cities in the world sounds like a bad idea to me. Especially since the foundation and protection of thouse large cities is the sediment mentioned earlier. Dams arent the safest form of energy to begin with and should something happen to the three gorges dam, the consequences are so far outside anything seen before, in terms of economic losses that it isnt worth it.

It reminds me of Aswan Dam, with all that it entails.

The cost associated with it would, in my opinion, been better spent developing Tidal power in Chinese Coast. But time will tell if the investment was worth it or not.
 

Oddball

Monthly Donor
..., but they are Communists.Bollocks! The Chinese are no more communist than the North Koreans are Democratic...

And anyhow, what have regime type to do with dam security anyhow? Look to the WASTE amount of hydropower scheemes the Russkies developed during the cold war.

Dams arent the safest form of energy to begin with and should something happen to the three gorges dam, the consequences are so far outside anything seen before, in terms of economic losses that it isnt worth it.
Bollocks again! For your information, the waste majority of dam-breakage happens to dams not buildt for energy production. In addition statistics (sorry no link :eek:) shows Hydro and Nuclear power to be the safest when you compare output of energy to loss of lifes.

OTOH the Three Georges is not primarily intended for energy production, but flood control. From building costs Iv seen, the Three Georges is not economical viable from a purly energy production point.

The cost associated with it would, in my opinion, been better spent developing Tidal power in Chinese Coast. But time will tell if the investment was worth it or not.
The Chinese seems to disagree. And Im on the Chinese side in this one. But hey, I guess Im not quite inpartial... :eek:
 

Hkelukka

Banned
Thats exactly the thing with Megaengineering projects. The potential risks arent exactly well understood by anyone. I might err on the side of caution here. But I would think we agree on one thing, the western world really needs more megaprojects, the chinese are winning us there :D
 
If I may ask, what does the "Virgin Fields Disaster" reference, exactly?

The Khrushchev-era Soviet project to basically colonize a lot of "virgin land" (previous undeveloped land) in, IIRC, mostly Central Asia. It worked okay for a few years, then totally failed because that land wasn't really suited to agriculture and infrastructural, management, and agronomic problems led to draining the soil of its nutrients without having any fertilizer to replenish them.

It's basically the Soviet version of slash-and-burn tropical agriculture, with a side order of Communism zeal making the problem massive.
 
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