51–60 of 255 posts
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How could they drain it?
I would imagine siphoning might be a simple enough process and could be setup in multiple places along the dam to avoid the asymmetric draining issues mentioned further in the discussion here on hacker news.
> The dam was designed by a Swiss firm of consultants and built by a German-Italian consortium in 1984. Water began seeping through in 1986, when it became apparent that the geological issues were worse than the consultants had predicted. I doubt that this was an innocent failure on their part. There was a huge financial incentive for these firms to find some way to validate this project. Successive foreign consultan…
I just don't understand why you assume that the risks were not disclosed to the government. In my eyes, it's way more likely that the government decided to go ahead anyway. This was one of Saddam Hussein's prestige projects - telling him that it couldn't be done could've been fatal.
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I just don't understand why you assume that the risks were not disclosed to the government. In my eyes, it's way more likely that the government decided to go ahead anyway. This was one of Saddam Hussein's prestige projects - telling him that it couldn't be done could've been fatal.
Isn't that a very good reason for not telling the truth to government?
> At 10:39 P.M., a massive landslide of about 260,000,000 cubic metres (340,000,000 cu yd) of forest, earth, and rock fell into the reservoir at up to 110 kilometres per hour (68 mph), completely filling the narrow reservoir behind the dam. The landslide was complete in just 45 seconds, much faster than predicted, and the resulting displacement of water caused 50,000,000 cubic metres (65,000,000 cu yd) of water to overtop the dam in a 250-metre (820 ft) high wave.
> This event occurred when the company and the Italian government dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin, and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.
> Numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded, and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it.
and also
> On 12 February 2008, while launching the International Year of Planet Earth, UNESCO cited the Vajont Dam tragedy as one of five "cautionary tales", caused by "the failure of engineers and geologists".
This picture on wikipedia of the dam has a really beautiful contrast between the water and the land around it ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Mo... ) Also draws attention to the fact that there's a massive amount of water behind the dam. edit: wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam , to save you the effort of googling :)
> formerly known as Saddam Dam such an opportunity lost to call it SadDam
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The problem is that the Italian contractor refuses to work unless the Italian army is allowed to send a unit to defend them. Last I'd heard, the Iraqi government is withholding their approval for this.
Considering the propension of the Iraqi military to run away when faced with ill-equipped, outnumbered opponents, I can't blame the contractor.
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I would imagine siphoning might be a simple enough process and could be setup in multiple places along the dam to avoid the asymmetric draining issues mentioned further in the discussion here on hacker news.
You can syphon up about 30ft. The dam is 371 ft.
So they were working on fixing this but the west imposed sanctions in the 90s and stopped work. "There is no permanent solution except building another dam,” Ansari said. A second structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40% complete."
Since the US was effectively for years in charge there, since 2003, theoretically, there was certainly enough time and money to finish the second dam.
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You can syphon up about 30ft. The dam is 371 ft.
Can you explain why a syphon won't work over 30ft?
http://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/askaphysicist/physi...