Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 179 posts

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

#71

Post by techsupporter »

grzm wrote: post #69
techsupporter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to knock on The New Yorker or cast aspersions on your choices, but I have two rebuttals: First, longform articles such as this one usually come months or years after the fact and don't help with the primary mission of journalism, which is to keep you abreast of the goings on around you. (Of everything from "what your local government is doing and how that affects you" to "what the financial markets in an…

longform articles such as this one usually come months or years after the fact and don't help with the primary mission of journalism, which is to keep you abreast of the goings on around you I think there are many facets to the mission of journalism. In-depth and investigative journalism are very important as well as being kept up-to-date on what's happening in the day-to-day. In some cases I prefer these more in-dep…

> For a piece like this, I have a hard time imagining it being served better as a short piece of a couple column inches in a paper or a 90 second segment on the evening news. ... it doesn't make the long-form pieces any less an important and vital aspect of journalism.

I agree and I should have written more words that are like what you wrote. The New Yorker is great for what it is, in-depth coverage of a complicated or unfamiliar topic. I suppose my point was that other, more general sources ought, in my opinion, to be part of a "balanced diet" of news coverage.

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

#72

Post by techman9 »

ChoGGi wrote: post #19
AlexCoventry wrote: post #17

Is there a summary of the main risks? Sounds interesting but I don't have time for New Yorker-style reporting.

There's only one risk, that the dam will burst. Not the dam itself, but the surrounding foundations. They built it on Gypsum (has a tendency to dissolve in water), upkeep work (pumping grout into the voids) stopped for 1-18 months depending on who you ask. " In the language of hydraulic engineering, the process eroding the foundation is known as “solutioning.” If that problem is not addressed, what happens next is “p…

> stopped for 1-18 months depending on who you ask

IMO, this is the scariest part of this. It's hard to make good engineering decisions in general. It's nearly impossible when there is no accurate picture of the situation.

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

#76

Post by bkbolte »

rem1313 wrote: post #74
jokoon wrote: post #73

I don't understand, can't they slowly empty the lake behind the dam?

The built up water is a form of potential energy and draining it would mean it is wasted.

I don't think wasting energy is the major concern in this situation

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

#77

Post by omnimus »

Angostura wrote: post #66
nyolfen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's gotten a lot of buzz lately, including on HN, but if you're interested in going down the gaddafi hole a bit further i'd recommend the recent adam curtis film, hypernormalisation. his films tend to be a bit like getting lost in a wikipedia hole in their own right, though.

You have to be a little careful though - https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg

Adam Curtis does make some generalisations but i am not sure its possible without them. The world is so complex that anyone trying to understand the topic would have to go through same research Curtis had to. Its so hard to make point about global situation in 3 hours.

It is a political commentary and sometimes its subjective but i think his work make lot of people think and investigate. That's whole lot better than something that tries to be objective no matter what - that always ends up saying practicaly nothing.

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

#78

Post by Someone »

techsupporter wrote: post #65
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.

I don't mean to knock on The New Yorker or cast aspersions on your choices, but I have two rebuttals: First, longform articles such as this one usually come months or years after the fact and don't help with the primary mission of journalism, which is to keep you abreast of the goings on around you. (Of everything from "what your local government is doing and how that affects you" to "what the financial markets in an…

"First, longform articles such as this one usually come months or years after the fact and don't help with the primary mission of journalism, which is to keep you abreast of the goings on around you."

I think journalism needn't only tell you what happened, but also why (in the opinion of the journalist) it happened. The latter requires reflection and/or research, so it cannot come directly after the fact.

I even think the why is more important than the what, as what doesn't give you enough information to react. For example, "X threatens to go to war with Y over Z" may mean just that, but also "X wants to show Y they are really concerned over Z" or "X wants to win the next elections, so it shows the electorate what it wants to hear". How other countries should react is quite different.

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

#79

Post by chris_7 »

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 .

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...

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

#80

Post by Filligree »

hvidgaard wrote: post #57
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #11

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 .

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.

Post reply on HN