Three gorges Dam
Three gorges Dam
The China Three Gorges Project (TGP) is of vital importance to the development and harnessing of the Yangtze River (Changjiang River). The dam site is situated at Sandouping of Yichang City, Hubei Province
, about 40 km upstream from the existing Gezhouba Project in Yichang. This project has been discussed for over half a century.
TGP is the largest water conservation project in the world. With the normal pool level (NPL) at 175m, the total storage capacity of the reservoir is 39.3 billion m3. The construction period of the whole project will be 17 years, from 1993 to 2009. This project will bring many benefits to China including flood control, power generation, navigation improvement, etc.
The total static cost estimate of TGP is 90.09 billion RMB Yuan based on the price at the end of May 1993 while the dynamic cost of TGP will be 203.9 billion Yuan by rough estimate. Three gorge Dam , as the biggest project in China, now attract many customers from all over the world to sightsee the mystery in human being.
The monumental Three Gorges Dam is the biggest hydropower-complex project in the world, ranks as the key project for improvement and development of Yangtze River. The dam is located in the areas of Xilingxia gorge, one of the three gorges of the river, which will control a drainage area of 1 million km 2 , with an average annual runoff of 451 billion m3 . The open valley at the dam site, with hard and complete granite as the bedrock, has provided the favorable topographical and geological conditions for dam construction. 
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.
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 cu km (9.43 cubic miles) 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. The Three Gorges Dam reservoir is longer than the 560 kilometres (348 mi) length of Lake Superior, but only 1.1 % of the surface area of the lake (82,400 km2) and about 1/700 of the volume of the lake (28700 cu km).
Entrance fee: RMB240
