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Amazing read, much longer than I generally get hooked into. I am astonished that "Grouting" (A term i find like many in the engineering word makes a possibly questionable practice sound like a good idea) is a functional, let alone acceptable solution, I can only begin to imagine what the ground under that dam must look like after the last 20+ years of concrete being poured into it.
The saddest part of the article is the US tried to blow the dam up during the gulf war. Why? That is as brutal as dropping the nukes on Japan.
The saddest part of the article is the US tried to blow the dam up during the gulf war. Why? That is as brutal as dropping the nukes on Japan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise
Dexter Filkins, the writer of this piece, is also the author of one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read - The Forever War (not the space war book). The Forever War https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307279448/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_OWDy...
A quick calculation of what it would take to replace the dam with solar panels: According to wikipedia the dam produces 1052MW. Let's call it 1GW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam According to quora you need about 10000m2 or one 1ha to produce 1MW. So 1000 * 10000m2 = 10km2 to produce 1GW. I wonder how big the lake is? Could solar panels installed in the drained lake - theoretically - provide the same or more…
But the damn isn't there just to provide power. Remember back when it was built Iraq exported power, in the form of oil. It's also there to regulate the flow of the river, which commonly floods the surrounding, crop-growing region.
So wouldn't a much smaller dam be sufficient for flood regulation?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One billion cubic meters is a cubic kilometer - a cube with each side measuring 1km. 11 of these would be a cube with ~2.25 km sides. Or slightly less than a mile and a half per side.
I never thought about the fact that a billion is "just" a thousand times a thousand times a thousand. So I thought of something I could picture a thousand of - for example millimeters. A thousand mm is just 1 meter, so I can easily see/picture a billion of something (cubic millimeters of air) right in front of me (as 1m x 1m x 1m). Neat!
It's a classic, by Charles and Ray Eames.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not that destroying infrastructure and killing the power to a city of civilians, despite ISIS control, is necessarily a good idea, but could they not just cut the lines? Do you know what happens when you run a turbine with nowhere to put the load? 750MW is enough to boil something like a kiloton of water every hour, that energy needs to go somewhere .
My vague understanding of a turbine was that it was a spinning magnet, so if you killed the circuit it would just... spin, I guess. If this is a concern, why isn't there a worry that ISIS or just a stray bomb would kill the power lines when retreating from Mosul? Though I suppose they could just target the dam itself...
The load in the circuit acts as a brake. If you kill the circuit, the turbine spins faster and faster until it breaks into pieces. To prevent that, the control systems stop the water from flowing into the turbine, but stopping the water from draining is the opposite of what they want.
I don't understand, can't they slowly empty the lake behind the dam?
Of course. When a foreign army invade your country, then proceed to criticize your infrastructure, they make themselves difficult to listen to. Even if they are right. If Iraqis had concerns wouldn't they involved third party inspections from non-American firms?
I don't understand, can't they slowly empty the lake behind the dam?
Well if the official stance is that there is no problem then why should they do that?
As the article says, the dam would break very quickly without giving enough warnings.