Recently, how the Three Gorges Project prevents nuclear attacks has been tracked by media at home and abroad. Recently, some experts said that the Three Gorges Dam has a certain ability to fight nuclear weapons attacks. So how does the Three Gorges Dam defend against attacks on various weapons?
The Three Gorges Dam encountered four threats. The dam body is solid and not afraid of nuclear weapons attacks. As a fixed target, the Three Gorges Dam has many ways to attack, among which four are more likely, namely nuclear attacks carried out using strategic ballistic missiles; long-range conventional attacks carried out using conventional cruise missiles; bombings carried out using fighter/bombers; blasting sabotage carried out using special forces. Among these four methods, the Three Gorges Dam was undoubtedly the most popular one.
The design of the Three Gorges Project has taken into account the attacks of nuclear weapons from the very beginning. Even if it is attacked by nuclear weapons, it will not cause greater secondary disasters. This is mainly because the Three Gorges Dam is a solid concrete gravity dam, consisting of 26.89 million tons of concrete, 290,000 tons of steel and 255,000 tons of steel. The dam is 185 meters high and the dam bottom is 121 meters wide. The so-called gravity dam is a water conservancy construction that uses the structural weight to maintain stability. Each dam can balance the upstream water pressure by relying on the friction between its own gravity and the riverbed. For this type of dam, even if a gap is blown open, it will only leak in one gap, and will never cause the entire dam to collapse.
The scale of the Three Gorges Dam also makes it have quite strong anti-strike ability. The British Air Force bombed the Nam Reservoir Dam near Ruhr in Germany in 1943. After solving the problem of bombs close to the dam foundation, the British army still needed to use a 9-ton bomb to hit multiple consecutive times before finally breaking out the gap. The foundation of the Three Gorges Dam is nearly 5 times thicker than that of the Nam Reservoir in Germany back then. Even if uses the method of blasting a dam foundation of the Three Gorges, it will not have any effect.
Indian media clamored to attack the Three Gorges ship locks. It is unique in structure and difficult to cause flood peaks.
In addition to the highly discussed nuclear weapons attacks, in recent years, some Indian media have also advocated attacking the flood discharge holes and diversion holes of the Three Gorges Dam in order to destroy the Three Gorges Dam. But in fact, most of the flood discharge holes and diversion holes of the Three Gorges Dam are underwater, and there are thick concrete partitions on both sides to cover them. If bombs or missiles are used to attack, it is more likely to hit the partitions or water surface. , and even if you explode a few holes, it is only equivalent to normal water release, and there will be no major floods at all.
In addition, Indian media said they planned to use Brahmos nuclear cruise missiles to bomb the ship locks of the Three Gorges Dam and caused floods. They claimed that the locks of the locks were fragile compared to the dam body and could be destroyed with conventional ammunition. But even the lock gates, which are considered fragile by India, are actually equivalent to the armored side of the battleship ship during World War II. They can only explode holes of about 2 meters with high explosive ammunition, and they cannot reach the gap of about 100 meters that can cause floods. Moreover, the lock of the Three Gorges Dam is a dam overturned lock. The lock gradually rises along the mountain and then falls again. The height is not on the same level. Therefore, even if it is opened at the same time, it cannot cause flood discharge, so naturally it is not afraid of attacks.
More importantly, the Three Gorges Reservoir is more than 600 kilometers long, but the average width is only 1.1 kilometers. Moreover, its downstream is the Three Gorges Valley, with a total length of 200 kilometers. This is a typical riverbed reservoir with a high safety factor. Even if the entire dam suddenly collapses, the flood peaks caused are very limited.
