Step aside, the Three Gorges dam. The latest Chinese colossal infrastructure project, if completed, will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world, high in the Tibetan plateau on the border with India.
China says that the hydroelectric power plant he builds in Tibet is crucial for her efforts to fill the goals of pure energy. Beijing also sees infrastructure projects as a way to encourage a slowed Chinese economy and job openings.
But this project caused concern among ecologists and Chinese neighbors – partly because Beijing said little about him.
The area where the dam is built is prone to earthquakes. The Tibetan river that is removed, Yarlung Tsangpo, flows into neighboring India as a Brahmaputra and in Bangladesh as a Jamuna, which causes concern about water safety in these countries.
What is known about the project?
At the end of December, China announced that the Government had approved the construction of the Motuo project in the lower course of Yarlung Tsangpo, but posted some details about it. This includes the cost of the project, where the money will come, what companies are included and how many people are likely to be displaced.
What is known is that the dam will be in the Medoga district on Tibet, in a steep canyon where the river is a real horseshoe -known bend known as a Great band and then falls about 6500 feet through approximately 30 miles.
By exploiting the kinetic energy of this fall, the hydroelectric power plant could generate 300 billion kilos of energy per year, estimates the State Power Construction Corporation of China or Powerchin, 2020. This would be threefold more than the capacity of three Gorges dams, currently the largest in the world, whose construction is cinema cost about $ 34 billion.
China did not reveal which company builds the dam, but some analysts say that Powerchina, the largest builder of the hydroenergy infrastructure in the country, is most likely involved. The company did not respond to the comment requests.
Experts say that construction in Great Bend, 500 meters deep canyon without roads, would probably take a decade because of technical challenges.
Even the basic dam is unknown.
According to Fan Xiaou, a senior engineer at the Sechuanian Geology Bureau who spoke with The New York Times, one proposal, which he saw as a probable approach, included the construction of a dam near the top of a big bandage and the diverting of water through a huge tunnel drilled in the canyon.
The highest Chinese leader XI Jinping promised that carbon emissions in the country will peak around 2030 when coal is replaced by renewable energy sources. The ruling communist party, which uses large public works projects to show its engineering skills, has studied ways for years to use the power of Yarlung Tsangpo.
Are there any risks for the environment?
The same forces that have created a large bandage are the risk of the dam that China builds on it. The Tibetan Plateau was created by the collision of an Indian and Eurasian tectonic slab millions of years ago. The Indian slab is still slowly moving to the Eurasian today, which is why the Himalayas regularly affect earthquakes.
Such seismic events endanger the safety of the dam. Chinese officials said cracks afterwards appeared on five hydroelectric power plants in Tibet The Magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit the town of Shigatse This month, killing more than 120 people.
Even if the dam is built enough to endure the earthquake, it is difficult to restrain the landslides and muddy streams that result from an earthquake and can kill people living nearby. Experts say the huge excavations involved in the construction of the dam can increase the likelihood of such disasters.
What about the people who live there?
It is difficult to know how the project was accepted by the Tibetans and members of other, smaller ethnic groups living in the area. Tibet is strictly limited by the Communist Party, which encouraged the Han Chinese to move to the plateau and strictly control the practicing of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibet is open to foreigners only with permission, and is usually banned for foreign journalists.
In the past, the Tibetans held protests against the projects of the hydroelectric power plant that threatened to squeeze them out, including protests last year In the province of Sichuan, according to the newspaper report.
The Dam of Motuo is expected to bring more changes to Medog, which was once the farthest Chinese county. The government has built highways in the region that have been attracting tourists and adventurers in recent years, says Matthew Akester, researcher Tibeta from India.
Now people will have to move to make room for a dam, which could require the sinking of agricultural land and cities. It is not clear how much people might be affected. Medog It has 15,000 inhabitants.
Tibet, who is huge but sparsely populated, does not need much energy, and the estimated capacity of the dam would also exceed what the adjacent provinces require, said Mr. Fan. The nearby Sichuan and Yunnan have many hydroelectric power plants that produce more energy than the region needed. And sending a long distance to other parts of China would be expensive.
How do India and Banglades react?
The dam could affect people who live downstream in the Indian states of Aronachal Pradesh and Assam, as well as in Bangladesh. If the dam captures a sediment, it would make the soil along the river downstream less fertile and erode the river coasts and coasts in India, he said Dr. Kalyan Rudra, Professor of Rijeka Science and Chairman of the Western Bengal Pollution Committee, Government Body.
Scientists in India and Bangladesh have asked China to share the details of their plans so that they can better evaluate the risks of the project. Indian diplomats also invited Beijing to ensure that the project will not harm the downstream countries. China says she has taken measures to prevent negative consequences for her neighbors.
Chinese secrecy promotes distrust, said Genevieve Donnellon-May, researcher at Oxford Global Society, based in the United Kingdom who studies the policy of leading and environmental conflicts. “Without Beijing, which has published hydrological data and detailed plans for the dam, India and Bangladesh remain in the dark, so it is harder to prepare to mitigate potential influences,” she said.
Both China and India accuse each other of trying to establish control of water resources for strategic or economic profits – which some experts and officials call “hydrohegemony”. Dam can be observed as a way of projection of Chinese power nearby a controversial border with Indiaincluding Aronachal Pradesh, who considers China with his territory.
Because it is upstream, “China can make decisions that directly affect the flow of water downstream, causing fears in India,” said Mrs. Donnellon-May.
Some officials in India have suggested the construction of a large dam on the tributary of Brahmaputra to store water and prevent a reduction in the flow that could be caused by the defeat on Tibet. But Dr. Rudra from the Western Bengalo Control Committee said that such a dam could cause the same problems with soil fertility and erosion.
Saif Hasnat contributed to reporting. Do you contributed to the research.
