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A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

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Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#121

Post by xg15 »

foota wrote: post #16
stale2002 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open a valve that DOESNT go through a turbine? A dam should have something like that....

I think the only equivalent is the floodgates, but, they only work when the water level is at a certain height, and I think I've read that if you open them to a true flood point you damage the dam. Drilling a second tunnel just to let water out is probably not considered economical.

> Drilling a second tunnel just to let water out is probably not considered economical.

Economical relative to what? The projected losses if half the populated area of the country is flooded?

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#122

Post by SEJeff »

impostervt wrote: post #14

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...

You really should consider reading Ian M Banks's Culture series novels if you like that. He's widely considered to be the best sci-fi author in the UK (He's scottish).

I'd certainly put the culture series close to par with Ender's Game and the Dune novels. They're most excellent.

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#123

Post by macintux »

grzm wrote: post #70
pasta wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If you believe that you should not read main stream news (like I do) this is one of the sources to get 'good' news from.

The Atlantic has good long-form pieces as well: https://www.theatlantic.com

I discovered The Atlantic when I was in high school and fell madly in love with it. It helped that it was ridiculously inexpensive, something like $14 for 2 years (yes, I'm old).

That magazine and The Economist (which I loved but couldn't afford a subscription to) kept me much better-informed than I am now, when I'm old and jaded and happier being ignorant.

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#124

Post by VLM »

Filligree wrote: post #80
hvidgaard wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could use it to boil some of the water away? A win/win if you're not a civilian relying on the power that is.

Well, on the assumption that it'd work... Now you've got a dam full of boiling water. And as you'll know from cleaning dishes, boiling water is far better at dissolving minerals than is cold water.

I'm curious why you guys want to boil the upstream water instead of the downstream water.

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#125

Post by xg15 »

Slightly off-topic:

> Up close, the work is wet, improvisatory, and deeply inexact. [...] Like his boss, Jabouri has worked at the dam since he was a young engineering graduate. Now, he told me, he is as sensitive to the dam’s changes as the electronic gear buzzing around him. [...]

“We feel our way through,” Jabouri said, standing by the pump. Generally, smaller cavities require thinner grout, so Jabouri started with a milky solution and increased its thickness as the void took more. Finally, after several hours, he stopped; his intuition, aided by the pressure gauges, told him that the cavity was full.

The irony saddens me that, if you replaced that worker and his human lifetime of knowledge with a "data-driven control system" and his intuition with a "machine learning algorithm", we would all hail the result as the pinnacle of technology in mainantence systems - even though the data and actual descision making would be almost the same...

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#126

Post by VLM »

lldata wrote: post #86

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…

You'd need twice as many panels because panels generate very little power at night whereas the dam continues to run.

Also you'd need a battery bank to hold half a days worth of electricity. You could try pumped storage... oh wait this is kinda the problem here isn't it, so that's not happening.

Theoretically a drought would have more sunny days and less water, so solar and dam do loosely speaking work together although the coupling isn't that tight for a long river.

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#127

Post by VLM »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #109
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constant infusion of concrete isn't an emergency measure. It's how the dam was intended to operate. The problem (from the planners' point of view, anyway) isn't that it requires constant grouting, it's that it stopped getting constant grouting.

My broader point is that a dam which requires constant grouting seems like a pretty bad idea.

All dams require maintenance or they fail. You are correct in that its merely a question of magnitude. Completely abandoned, Hoover Dam for example would last a lot longer, but hardly forever. Where the line is drawn is pretty arbitrary, and if the alternative is the people have no electricity or irrigation water so they riot and kill you ... Saddam was famous for the stick but sometimes he used the carrot to keep his country together. No one is keeping it together now, of course.

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#128

Post by bogomipz »

Someone wrote: post #113
Hondor wrote: post #101

Way down the bottom, we see the problem is solved for at least the next year: "Early in 2016, under American prodding, the Iraqis reopened negotiations with Trevi S.p.A., the Italian firm. In September, a team of engineers, hired at a cost of three hundred million dollars, arrived at the dam to perform a crash repair job. Their main task is to install updated equipment, designed to fill the voids beneath the dam more…

The sentence folllowing that starts with But . 'Crash repair job' also doesn't instill confidence that it is a given this will work. Also, this dam still is close to a war zone, if not in a war zone. That updated equipment may not make it there, can get destroyed in an attack, or the personnel doing the work can be 'persuaded' not to work or may outright be killed. What surprises me most about this story is that they…

This has been a pattern that has been seen over and over in Iraq. Contractors come in an build "state of the art" infrastructure to repair or replace existing infrastructure. This in itself is not a problem per se. There are two issues.

One is the local population lacks the training and expertise to run and maintain this "state of the art" infrastructure. Not that they couldn't become capable because they certainly could but their frame of reference is maintaining 40 or 50 year old infrastructure.

The second issue is that they don't have the financial means of maintaing this newly installed infrastructure. Their operating budget often can't accommodate the maintenance of such state of that art infrastructure. What's good for a first world contractors bottom line is not necessarily the best fit for a third world country's utility company.

This book details a lot of this and is worth a look:

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Money-Wasted-Billions-Corporate...

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#129

Post by tw04 »

xg15 wrote: post #125

Slightly off-topic: > Up close, the work is wet, improvisatory, and deeply inexact. [...] Like his boss, Jabouri has worked at the dam since he was a young engineering graduate. Now, he told me, he is as sensitive to the dam’s changes as the electronic gear buzzing around him. [...] “We feel our way through,” Jabouri said, standing by the pump. Generally, smaller cavities require thinner grout, so Jabouri started wit…

What happens if Jabouri gets hit by a bus? I love a good craftsman as much as anyone, but when the lives of that many people rely on one person, you're just asking for a disaster.

Re: A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

#130

Post by danharaj »

exabrial wrote: post #118

I'm curious to what ratio an abusive regime is affected by general sanctions vs the populace under its authoritarian control. Sad to see so many people living in poverty from a dictator, then sanctions, then an invasion, now ISIS (And a dam apparently). I don't know what the solution is, but that area of the world just cannot find peace.

> Sad to see so many people living in poverty from a dictator

Iraq was an urbanized country with effective national healthcare, homegrown industries, plenty of agriculture and natural resources and a high standard of living relative to its neighbors before the Gulf War. However, it is true that Saddam Hussein did significant damage to the country's economy by engaging in genocide and the devastating Iran-Iraq war. His brutality in suppressing anyone he thought was opposing him was truly awful. Still, it needs to be kept in mind that the current day Iraqi economy in shambles is significantly the work of sanctions that did nothing to weaken the totalitarian regime's grip on power and an invasion that devastated the country, replaced the regime with a new kleptocratic government, and sold many of the country's resources to international entities.

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