Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Safron]

The theory is pretty simple. Put an enormous amount of new weight upon the crust of the Earth, and it sinks (creating earthquakes), and changes magma convection currents (causing earthquakes). The earthquake epicenter is 100 miles away from 3RG. The largest dam in the world! There's an established pattern of new reservoir's creating earthquakes. There's tons of academic discussion on this online search "reservoir induced earthquake". Why isn't the media/anyone picking up on this?

[Julius]

[mindmetoo]

[mindmetoo]

While I could have edited the above, I don't mind admitting I could be wrong (unlike Junior).

http://www.springerlink.com/content/vu4u79euw6w01unx/

[Julius]

[postfundie]

[mindmetoo]

[Julius]

[desultude]

I was rather hoping for the opposite effect- I wanted to see 3 Gorges crumble (without hurting a lot of people!) as an effect of the earthquake.

[JMO]

[mindmetoo]

[Zolt]

It's an interesting hypothesis but I just don't buy it.

Large construction projects have been known or suspected to trigger minor tremors (magnitude 3-4), especially when they're sitting right atop old fault lines, but the relationship between magnitude and energy is exponential, not linear. That means the raw power involved in the south china quake was several thousand times beyond anything the dam could have caused. The building of the dam may have at most hastened the tremor, but the pent-up energy must have been already there and would have blown up sooner than later.

Magnitude 8 quake means about 2e19 Joule, or about 4 billion tons of TNT that's 40 units of the largest thermonuclear weapon ever built. Basically you wouldnt have had a blast that big if you had filled the whole dam with TNT.

Interesting but useless facts: while checking these numbers, I found out that the Richter scale goes up to 12 (which is the Earth breaking apart to the core), and that is equivalent to 160 trillion tons of TNT, or about as much energy as the sun shines down on the Earth in a single day. �O�

[Julius]

[Czarjorge]

[Julius]

Alaska Science Forum
November 10, 1999
Giant Chinese Dam May Cause Earth to Move
"A catastrophic failure of the dam would be perhaps the single most destructive event in human history," said Freymueller, a professor of geophysics.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF14/1465.html


The Three Gorges Dam is situated near six active fault lines and above 15 million people. A dam burst at Three Gorges would, says engineer Philip Williams, president of the San Francisco-based International Rivers Network, �rank as one of history�s worst man-made disasters.�

earthquakes between 6.0 and 6.5 are expected once the reservoir is filled in 2009.

Over 700 million tons of sediment are deposited into the Yangtze annually, making it the fourth largest sediment carrier in the world. The Chinese officials have decided to halt the flow of sediment higher up in the Yangtze tributaries by building four smaller dams, including one that will be second only to the Three Gorges in size. What will happen when sediment builds up behind these dams? There is little to address the primary source of flooding: the loss of forest cover in the Yangtze watershed, and the loss of 13,000 square km of lakes which stored excess water but now contain the topsoil from the lost forest cover.
http://katabasis.cementhorizon.com/archives/001604.html

researchers were surprised to see that the dam affected rainfall over such a large area - a 62-square-mile region - rather than just 6 miles projected in previous studies.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/three_gorges_effects.php

Of the 3,000 to 4,000 remaining critically endangered Siberian 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.[53] 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.

While logging in the area was required for construction 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam

So there you havit: pros and cons. But if an earthquake above 7 on the richter scale hits the dam, 15 million people will be in immediate danger.