21–30 of 255 posts
Iraq was altogether a different country when it was built, but infrastructure that can fail killing 1M people unless maintained 24/7 by a 300 person crew sounds like it has way too many failure scenario for comfort. AFAIK you can abandon the Hoover dam and it will still be there in 500 years. It looks like the Mosul dam engineers couldn't achieve remotely the same result given the soil it's built on, but there must h…
Perhaps you meant to say "couldn't achieve..."?
Iraq was altogether a different country when it was built, but infrastructure that can fail killing 1M people unless maintained 24/7 by a 300 person crew sounds like it has way too many failure scenario for comfort. AFAIK you can abandon the Hoover dam and it will still be there in 500 years. It looks like the Mosul dam engineers couldn't achieve remotely the same result given the soil it's built on, but there must h…
https://web.archive.org/web/20140219214451/http://www.shafaa...
The whole thing is an utter clusterfuck. An American civil engineering prof is saying the sole possible solution is a cutoff wall that, by the way, has to not only be 800 ft below the embankment but is significantly deeper than any other such cutoff wall ever built. And it must be constructed in the middle of Iraq under a dam in serious danger of collapsing.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/03/will-italy-be-able-to-fi...
And finally another interesting article; the alternative to a cutoff wall is building a second $2B dam downstream. There's a good graphic half way down the article of the problems with the Mosul dam. Of course, that's not just $2B but at minimum several years away...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/02/mosul-dam-engin...
John Oliver did a pretty good piece on infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8 No politician gets to cut a ribbon with a giant pair of scissors when they fund routine maintenance. So why bother.
Do they really have snow worth to speak of in Iraq?
"pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir" Do they really have snow worth to speak of in Iraq?
Something tells me they want to use the risk of a failing dam as a weapon to pursue Mosul population to rise against ISIS. Or that they just don't care if 1M+ died in an ISIS stronghold.
"pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir" Do they really have snow worth to speak of in Iraq?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember that the sluice gates are seized. Obviously they should still drain it but it's not as simple as making the call.
How could they drain it?
Iraq was altogether a different country when it was built, but infrastructure that can fail killing 1M people unless maintained 24/7 by a 300 person crew sounds like it has way too many failure scenario for comfort. AFAIK you can abandon the Hoover dam and it will still be there in 500 years. It looks like the Mosul dam engineers couldn't achieve remotely the same result given the soil it's built on, but there must h…