A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by tw04 » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

mark_edward wrote: post #168

tw04 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> human labor has done -- training, more than 1 person who knows how to do a given job, etc Except we're not talking about standard human labor. The guy isn't building bricks, he's maintaining a damn through "feel". That's not something that can just be easily trained. By your logic, explain why we can't buy a new Stradivarius today. Obviously we dealt with the problem of just training someone else to do the same job…

We can build violins that equal or surpass Strads in many measures. Strads are not varied because they are technically unbeatable, they are valued for the same reason art is.

>We can build violins that equal or surpass Strads in many measures. Strads are not varied because they are technically unbeatable, they are valued for the same reason art is.

We can TODAY by means of technology. There was a 200 year gap where we couldn't. And had it been something life-threatening (like maintaining a dam) instead of just producing music, we would've been up a creek without a paddle.

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

#172

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #11

chris_7 wrote: post #3

> Kurdish officials intended to shut down the turbines, but American officials told them that this would add more water to the reservoir, making the dam more likely to burst. So isis continued to profit from the dam. “We wanted to strangle them, but we weren’t allowed,” a Kurdish official told me. Not that destroying infrastructure and killing the power to a city of civilians, despite ISIS control, is necessarily a g…

> 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 .

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by takk309 » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

lobster_johnson wrote: post #37

21 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know, I guess it depends on the depth, for small buildings you just hammer the concrete pillar in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkXTLAxGKxA I'm surprised you never witnessed it, I've seen this at least 3-4 times. Probably because nowadays constructions sites have big opaque fences around them.

I've seen those, but always assumed they were driving steel beams into the earth. I'm surprised that concrete can be manhandled that way without being smashed into pieces.

Keep in mind that despite the term "drive", the concrete piles are usually vibrated into place. It is not like driving a fence post with a sledge hammer. Obviously there is still a lot of stress introduced to the concrete column, but it is designed with the stresses in mind. The reinforcing steel takes a lot of the load during the placement process.

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

#174

Post by takk309 » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 7:04 PM UTC

PietdeVries wrote: post #114

cesarb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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.

The story suggests there is a 300 foot wide canal that can be used to let water go in casse of an emergency. Well, how about doing so now? Rather than using the turbines, use the canal to let the water out, but without it generating electricity...

The emergency spill way is in case of a large rain or melt event that brings the water level up quickly. The spill way is used to ensure that the dam is not over topped, which is usually catastrophic. As such, the spill way is usually placed at or near the maximum safe free board (distance from the top of the dam down to the water level). What this all means is that the spill way can only be used when the water level in the reservoir is allowed to get to high and possibly dangerous levels. The article stated the the water level has already been decreased by 10 meters which means that the spill way is going to remain dry for a long while.

Next time you are near a dam look around and you will find that most have three paths for the water to leave the reservoir. The first is through the power generating turbines, second is the sluice gates which control water level, and third is the emergency spill way which is designed to fend off catastrophic failure.

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

#175

Post by woodandsteel » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 7:24 PM UTC

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 article also says many experts are scared to death it is going to collapse, and a chart of dangerous dams puts it much higher than any other. I bet that one of the conditions the Iraqi government insisted on including in the contract with Trevi S.p.A is that it says to the public it is sure it can prevent a collapse.

I think people should trust independent experts much more than companies under contract from a very corrupt and incompetent government. Don't you agree?

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

#176

Post by woodandsteel » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

huxley wrote: post #170

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if your point is applicable here. This is a dam from 1986, not some new fangled contraption no one understands. It has a known maintenance schedule and is old school technology. The problem is, ISIS decided to murder or chase off the staff who maintains the dam and didn't keep up with the work it needs. Worse, the construction was done "on the cheap" as dictated by the Hussein regime. Instead of digging…

Iraq had a lot of money back then and like in much of the developing world, mega-projects were sought after (and not just by despots). The Mosul Dam was not built cheaply, it was rushed to completion to meet some idiotic deadline. The other options would likely not have cost much more (especially considering maintenance), but it would have taken more time. And it was "first-world style", the consultants and construct…

The article says the dam was rushed because of the war with Iran that Saddam Hussein started in 1979.

Saddam had the crazy idea that he could conquer the Middle East and make Iraq into a world superpower. So he started a war with much larger Iran, the war stalemated and went on for 8 years, with enormous loss in human lives, and enormous debts piled up on the Iraqi side. That ended and Saddam invaded Kuwait to get its oil riches, leading to the Gulf War which Iraq quickly lost.

Saddam still wanted to build an empire, so he prevented full nuclear arms inspections to keep the rest of the Middle East afraid he still had a nuclear arms program, and in fact planned to re-start it after the inspection and sanctions program ended.

That lead to the Iraqi war, which Iraq quickly lost, and left Iraq so divided and disorganized that ISIS could arise and take much of the country, including temporarily taking the Mosul Dam. And the disorganized, corrupt government has bungled dealing with the threat of the dam collapsing, and so we are in the present, very dangerous situation.

So it all goes back to Saddam Hussein, and the generally poor political situation in Iraq, and beyond that, I would say, the Middle East as a whole.

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

#177

Post by woodandsteel » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

Fiahil wrote: post #99

> In private, some Iraqis pose conspiracy theories. “I know a lot of Iraqis who think this is just a big psyops operation by the U.S. government—senior officials, not just Iraqis on the street,” 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…

What the Iraqis should do is not just believe every conspiracy theory that comes along, but carefully investigate each one to see if it makes sense. From what I understand, they don't generally do this.

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

#178

Post by hueving » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #165

tw04 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then someone else picks up the code and continues maintaining it. You can read through documentation and existing code. You can't extract information from a dead guys brain...

What stops a human from documenting a process in writing?

Intuition is pretty hard to document.

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

#179

Post by griffinkelly » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 6:01 AM UTC

gpm wrote: post #139

griffinkelly wrote: post #132

I have a close friend that is is the Army Corps of Engineers at the dam. Despite being deployed to the dam months ago, she's seen sporadic time at the dam due to ISIS in the area. Every time they even get close the higher ups decide to evacuate the American engineers, can't say what's been decided for the others. During the recent Mosul Offensive, they were away from the dam the entire time. She was also telling me t…

> ISIS didn't manage any real structural damage to the dam. This makes it sound like they were intentionally trying to destroy the damn, were they? I'm not an expert but it seems like it should be easy for a military group controlling a damn to blow it up if they wanted to. Though the article mentions that it was built to be resistant against air strikes, so maybe not?

She said all the booby trapping happened in the last days as the US was about to recapture the dam, so it was hastily done. That being said, it did slow operations as they then had to sweep the entire dam after they realized what happened.

She said it would have been pretty difficult for them to cause significant structural damage, because as mentioned it was 'bomb proof' and as stated they were making money up until the very end in selling electricity.