Three Gorges Dam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Three Gorges Dam - Essay Example The whole project is generally a hydroelectric engineering power generator constructed along Yangtze River; the longest river in China which runs across half of the land, horizontally into the Pacific. The project is the world’s biggest power station as far as installed capacity (22,500MW) is concerned. In addition, Three Gorges Dam is the 2nd biggest functional hydroelectric project in regard to annual energy production, generating in 2012 over 98.1Twh plus 83.7 Twh last year (Trouw, 2014). The idea of building a huge dam on River Yangtze was initially the brainchild of Sun Yat-Sen in 1919.He envisioned a dam with a capacity of producing 22 GW of power being feasible downstream Three Gorges. The government, in 1932, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek started preliminary plans on the Three Gorges. Japanese military occupied Yichang in 1939 and began surveying the area. The Otani plan design for the dam was finished in expectation of a possible defeat of China by Japanese. Engineer John Savage of US bureau of reclamation in 1944 designed a proposal of the dam project paving way for 54 Chinese engineers to leave for US to receive specialized training. The initial concept was for the dam to be utilized for unique movement of ships; however the project was stopped in 1947 due to Chinese Civil war. The project was in 1949 supported by Mao Zedong, though he started Gezhouba Dam. The idea would re-emerge in 1980s and finally the approval came from the National People†™s Congress in 1992.Construction of the dam started in earnest in 14th of December 1994 and was expected to be complete and fully operational by 2009.However, additional projects like the underground power facility with 6 extra generators delayed complete operations till the May of 2012(Trouw, 2014). The project has come with its own share of controversy. In 1958, for instance, engineers who spoke negatively