China General

Geoengineering

What do you get when you take 600km of river, US$100 billion, 27 million cubic meters of concrete, 14 million people displaced, environmental devastation … just some of the facts about the world’s largest hydropower plant, the Three Gorges Dam in China.

Yangtze River

NASA: Yangtze River – May 2001, Bottom – March 2003

Even though it’s not yet fully functional the impact of the project is already apparent from space and truly an engineering marvel, if ethically and technically questionable. It’s a big price for a system which will only provide 3% of China’s power needs.

Author

Originally from the UK, David is designer and wanderer currently based in Kamakura. Prior to this, he lived in China and longs to explore more of this vast and varied land. He started Randomwire in 2003 to chronicle his travels and occasional musings. Feel free to drop him a line.

2 Comments Add New Comment

  1. David says:

    The pictures were taken by NASA as is linked in the credit below it… the colours are not real as the human eye percieves light. I suspect it was taken in infra-red to highlight the difference between land and water but I could be wrong.

    Indeed they are cool pics!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *