Hydroelectric Dams, More Bad than Good?
This summers Olympic games in Beijing has brought tremendous media coverage into the country of China. A fast growing economy is depicted in many of the photos and videos that are shown. With a booming Chinese economy comes quality of life increases for its citizens. Many of this countries 1+billion people are being introduced to the things we take for granted in the United States and other parts of the developed world. These things include televisions, computers, air conditioners, household appliances etc. All these things require electricity and create the need for more energy. This has forced the nation of China to build many new power plants to supply the ever increasing demand of electric power. One such power source is the 3 gorges hydro electric dam.
To gain a full understanding of this project one word can be used to describe it: HUMONGOUS. At a length of 7661 feet and a height of 331 feet above the water level, it is clearly one gigantic structure. It dwarfs the most well known dam in the United States, the Hoover dam (1244 feet in length and 726 feet in height), both in size and overall power output.
At full capacity the estimated electric production of the 3 Gorges Dam is said to be 22,500 Mega-Watts, and over 100 Terra-Watt-Hours yearly. To gain a grasp of this number I found some figures on the Energy Information Administration website. According to this site in the year 2006 there was an estimated 4605 Terra-Watt-Hours consumed. So if my math is correct that would mean the 3 Gorges Dam could power nearly 2.2 Percent of the United States electrical demands in the year 2006.
The project has drawn a significant amount of criticism. Some of the major issues include: the hundred of thousands (if not millions) of people that were displaced to build the dam, the loss of cultural artifacts dating back hundreds of years ago, and the potential destruction of wildlife ecosystems. It is important to note that in the United States similar problems have developed due to hydroelectric dams such as the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state. Loss of spawning grounds for certain spawning fish have caused a decline in their numbers.
The question becomes what are we as a society willing to pay to have clean and renewable energies? Is there limits to when projects step over the line and become no longer feasible? Certainly these are difficult questions to answer.
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very nice servey n very informative thanks for sharingg