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Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

theguardian.com

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Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#91

Post by viggity »

acqq wrote: post #44
brohee wrote: post #16

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…

What's the use in comparing that dam with that another? They have absolutely nothing in common. If you wanted to know why it's so dangerous, it still doesn't help comparing the dangerous one with your favorite and safe dam. Earlier news give more context, the Iraq and US official warning, now the former engineers are even more worried than Iraq and US officials who did make explicit warnings, which certainly means it…

dude, it sounds like there is nothing that would help the dangerous dam. Nobody thinks that just words are going to help, but learning more about a dams in general (such as the hoover) does illuminate the the issue even if it doesn't help.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#92

Post by acqq »

salgernon wrote: post #83

An article from 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7069109.stm With a similar conclusion mentions that the water resources minister kept much of the discussions about how to proceed with the dam maintenance out of the public eye to avoid bringing the issues to the attention of insurgents.

That still has nothing to do with the obligations of the US who were in charge of Iraq since 2003.

Salgernon posted the link documenting how much the US engaged (hint: minimally, compared to what was needed to fix the issue):

http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2007/10/god-really-doesnt-l...

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#93

Post by acqq »

viggity wrote: post #91
acqq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use in comparing that dam with that another? They have absolutely nothing in common. If you wanted to know why it's so dangerous, it still doesn't help comparing the dangerous one with your favorite and safe dam. Earlier news give more context, the Iraq and US official warning, now the former engineers are even more worried than Iraq and US officials who did make explicit warnings, which certainly means it…

dude, it sounds like there is nothing that would help the dangerous dam. Nobody thinks that just words are going to help, but learning more about a dams in general (such as the hoover) does illuminate the the issue even if it doesn't help.

du-de viggity, somebody else (yread) here posted, but outside of this thread, don't ask why, that Hoover dam also had to be grouted after it was finished:

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/hoover_dam/Grout%20Curtain%20Fa...

and that that lasted 12 years.

Now imagine that there wasn't peace at that time but that people couldn't even get enough food and medicine, and that at the time this should have been finished some 500,000 kids died, like in Iraq:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE

There was an attempt by Iraqis to somehow fix this (building the second dam) but as said, there were worse things happening.

I still believe that learning about everything that happened around the dam is more illuminating than the comparison with the Hoover.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#94

Post by acveilleux »

adrianN wrote: post #46
rwallace wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it suffice to just take a stick of dynamite to one of the seized gates?

What could possibly go wrong?

Various forms of shaped charges and explosives could be used to open the sluice gates but that would leave them permanently opened.

The main fear here is that if the dam reaches its design head, the water will tunnel underneath and around the dam through the water soluble rocks. The dam can't exceed the design head because of the spillway that is visible to the south east of the dam.

So explosives could well be used to force open the sluice gates.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#95

Post by knowaveragejoe »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #85
james_pm wrote: post #62

To give some sense of the scale of the disaster that would follow a failure, the US considered bombing that dam and releasing all that water in response to a potential chemical attack on US troops during Gulf War I, according to Colin Powell ( http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/script_b.html - search for dams).

They considered an attack that would have killed ~1M people, presumably mainly civilians? sigh smh

To play devil's advocate here, any competent military would consider possibilities like this. "War is hell" is said so often these days as to be blasé, but it really is true.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#96

Post by yiyus »

rwallace wrote: post #13
bjackman wrote: post #7

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.

Would it suffice to just take a stick of dynamite to one of the seized gates?

I am just guessing here, but I would expect that there are better ways to solve the issue with the gate that are easier, safer and even cheaper than dynamite.

The article says only one of two gates has problems, but they cannot open only one because of the asymmetry that would introduce. So, to solve the problem with dynamite, it would be necessary to make very good calculations to be sure you make exactly the hole you want, then actually do it with a very high precision (for an explosion).

I do not think opening that gate is as much a technical problem as a problem of initiative and responsibility.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#97

Post by mlonkibjuyhv »

x0x0 wrote: post #19

There's a paper by some professors at Mosul Univ discussing the dam. Apparently it's built on gypsum and has been patched by continuous filling with cement; the current problems stem from incorrect construction in the 80s. The professors game out 5 catastrophic failures. They range from a wall of water 25m high that would eventually cover over 50% of Mosul city (high) to a mere 34% of the city (best case.) Maximal wa…

This sounds like biblical history in the making...

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#98

Post by emodendroket »

thomasz wrote: post #48
atdt wrote: post #31

> 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.

While Saddam Hussein may not have been a friend of human rights I doubt he would have had European engineers killed for declining to work on his project.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#100

Post by Retric »

atdt wrote: post #31

> 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…

It's not necessarily a faulty design. It simply requires maintenance that's not happening just like you car engine needs oil and you need to keep swapping that oil out after a while.

ex: A spent fuel pool is actually really simple and 'safe' just add water and keep cool. That does not mean you can walk away and not touch one for a year and expect everything to be ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool

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