Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 02, 2002
Three Gorges Project to Generate Power in August 2003
The open diversion channel of the Yangtze River is scheduled to be dammed up at the end of November, as known lately from the China Three Gorges Project Corporation. Now the checking work of the open channel has been started, with the damming date depending on water conditions. The Project will start generating power in August next year.
The open diversion channel of the Yangtze River is scheduled to be dammed up at the end of November, as known lately from the China Three Gorges Project Corporation. Now the checking work of the open channel has been started, with the damming date depending on water conditions.
At a technological symposium held on August 26, general manager of the corporation Lu Youmei said that in November, the Yangtze River will be totally blocked and forced it to flow out from the 22 diversion bottom outlets of the dam. After that two cofferdams will be put up during the closure period of navigation for water reserving.
The Three Gorges reservoir is scheduled to retain water from April next year, with the water level to go up to 135 meters by June and finally reaching 175 meters in coming years. By then, a "manmade lake" with a total capacity of 39.3 billion cubic meters of water will appear in the enclosure of mountain peaks.
A closure period of navigation of 67 days is predicted next year, which will be resumed by June. By the latter half of next year, electricity generators will be gradually put into operation to generate 5 billion-kw/h electricity, Lu announced confidently.
Dam project to generate power in 2003
China's Three Gorges Project will start generating power in August next year, according to Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corporation.
The company announced Sunday that the No. 2 and No. 5 generating units will start production first, followed by the No. 3 unit in two months and the No. 6 unit in three months. The four units will yield a total of 5.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2003.
Located in Yichang, central China's Hubei Province, the Three Gorges Project is to have 26 units installed, each with a 700,000-kw capacity, by 2009. It will be the world's largest hydropower project with a total capacity of 18.2 million kw and an annual output of 84.68 billion kwh.
Hydropower specialists predict the power generation capacity ofthree Gorges Project would remain unchallenged internationally formany years to come.
The specialists reckon it would take 50 million tons of raw coal or 25 million tons of crude oil to produce the same amount ofenergy as the annual output of the Three Gorges Project. Thus the project would avoid the emission of one million to two million tons of sulfur dioxide, 300,000 to 400,000 tons of nitrogen oxide,10,000 tons of carbon monoxide and 150,000 tons of soot into the air annually.
Construction of the project started in 1993 and will be finished in 2010.
Last batch of migrants
A group of 1,859 residents from the Three Gorges region became the latest and last batch of immigrants to arrive in Shanghai before the dam area is flooded next year.
They arrived at the city's Baoyang Wharf at the weekend, fulfilling Shanghai's share of resettling 5,505 people from Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.
Officials said the arrival of the immigrants in Shanghai meant the long-distance movement of residents from the dam area has effectively been completed.
Ou Huishu, chief director with Chongqing Municipal Migration Bureau, said more than 116,000 residents from Chongqing and Central China's Hubei Province have been resettled across the country since 1999.
Ou, who accompanied the latest batch of migrants to Shanghai, revealed that around a million residents in the Three Gorges area will have to move to make way for the gigantic hydropower project.
Ou said 500,000 people will have been relocated by the end of this year. The whole migration process is set to be completed by 2009 and the reservoir in the Three Gorges will begin to store water on June 1.
The newcomers to Shanghai, most of whom are farmers, will be settled in suburban areas of the city such as Chongming, Nanhui, Jinshan, Qingpu, Songjiang and Jiading. There is demand for farmhands in these districts and workers in neighbouring township businesses, according to the publicity office of the municipal government.
Each immigrant family will be offered a new house, a plot of farmland, financial subsidies and some daily necessities, according to the office.
Publicity official Wang Wei also said children of the immigrant families could start school immediately.
According to the sources with the municipal government, more than 3,000 migrants to Shanghai have had their living conditions improved, with more than 30 per cent working at local businesses or social institutions.