Three Gorges Dam , full name is "Three Gorges Yangtze River Hub Water Conservancy Project". It is the largest hydropower station in the world with the largest power generation of single hydropower station in the world, and it is also the crystallization of the wisdom of the Chinese working people and the pride of the Chinese people. However, because the Three Gorges Dam is in a special geographical location in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River , some friends may worry about this: If one day a war breaks out and the Three Gorges Dam is attacked by the enemy, will there be a possibility of floods breaking out in the downstream of the Three Gorges ? Today, this episode will reveal the answers to your questions.
( Yangtze River Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project)
First of all, let’s give a reassurance to the attack here: the Three Gorges Dam is unlikely to be attacked by the enemy. Even if it is attacked, it will not cause downstream floods, and the reasons behind this are many aspects.
The first reason is that the current international law stipulates : If a war breaks out between the two countries, both sides strictly prohibit the blowing of facilities that may cause losses to civilians, including reservoirs and dams.
Today's UN international law has set such rules not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because in history before the founding of the United Nations, there were indeed tragedies caused by the blow-up of each other's dam during the war between the two countries: at the end of World War II, in order to force Nazi Germany to surrender as soon as possible, British Royal Air Force planned an operation code-named "Punishment" in 1943, and the goal of this operation was the famous Ruhr Dam in Germany at that time.
(Ruer Dam during World War II)
In order to achieve this combat goal, the United Kingdom at that time dispatched as many as 19 Lankester bombers and carried special heavy roller bombs to strike the Ruer Dam. In this attack, two "Ruer Dam" composed of 3 dams were blown up, hundreds of millions of cubic meters of stock water leaked out and flooded the surrounding farmland.
However, although the British army basically destroyed the Ruhr Dam during this military operation, the strategic effect achieved in destroying the Ruhr Dam was not satisfactory. This military operation did not have a significant impact on Germany's industrial capacity, nor did it kill German troops. instead killed 1,600 German civilians. Among these 1,600 civilians, 1,000 were mainly slave laborers captured by Soviet Union. The bombing results of not only made the alliance very dissatisfied with this, but instead gave Germany the excuse to encourage the people to go to the battlefield and continue to confront the allies.
(Ruer Dam destroyed by British Air Force )
Therefore, after the end of World War II, the newly formed United Nations learned the lessons of history and immediately promulgated relevant international laws, clearly stipulating "In the subsequent wars, it is strictly forbidden to attack reservoirs, dams and other facilities that may have an impact on civilian lives in both directions" . This is also one of the reasons why the Three Gorges Dam is unlikely to become a target of enemy attack in international law today.
However, some friends may refute this: If a war breaks out between the major powers between the world, I am afraid that the United Nations will not make any final decisions, let alone the "international law" that is itself a piece of paper? However, there is another important reason why the Three Gorges Dam is unlikely to be a target of attack, that is, the structure of the Three Gorges Dam itself.
According to statistics published on the Internet, the Three Gorges Dam is 2308 meters long, 185 meters high, 15 meters wide on the top of the dam and 124 meters wide on the bottom. 134 million cubic meters of soil and rock were excavated, 27.94 million cubic meters of concrete were poured, and the total weight of steel bars and metal structures was 729,500 tons. The cumulative power generation in 2020 was 111.8 billion kilowatt-hours. Such a size makes the Three Gorges Dam the well-deserved "No. 1 Dam" in the world today. The "first" here refers not only to the construction scale and power generation of the Three Gorges Dam itself, but also its own hardness.
(Three Gorges Dam)
Phase evaluation expert of the Three Gorges Project: Shen Guofang In an interview with a reporter, the hardness of the Three Gorges Dam is also one of the best in the world today, because the steel bar and concrete content of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam not only sets the highest in the world today, but even the place where the Three Gorges Dam itself is built is based on granite rock. Granite is known as the "king of rocks". It ranks among the top rock density in geology . The density of a piece of granite can reach 2790-3070 kg per cubic meter, and its compressive strength of 1000-3000 kg per square centimeter. Yes, you read that right, it is a granite rock surface that can withstand 1-3 tons of weight per square centimeter!
In history, there are countless historic buildings made of granite and hard fortifications. The more well-known ones are the People's Heroes Monument in front of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and the plaque " Zhongzheng Memorial Hall " located in Taipei. In history, the most famous fortifications built by granite is the " Mannaheim Line of Defense " built by Finland during World War II . This line of defense built by granite once blocked the powerful steel torrent of the Soviet army.
(Mannaheim defense bunker made of granite can block the Soviet attack)
In addition, expert Shen Guofang also added: "The hardness of the current Three Gorges Dam is enough to defend against any offensive in any conventional war."
In conventional wars, cruise missiles are weapons often used by the army to attack enemy military or civilian facilities. However, conventional cruise missiles generally weigh about 1.5 tons, while warheads generally weigh less than 500 kilograms. In the previous article, we mentioned that each square centimeter of granite rock surface can withstand a weight of 1-3 tons. Therefore, the conventional cruise missiles may strike the Three Gorges Dam as if it is tickling the dam.
(US Tomahawk cruise missile)
So, if some cruise missiles with better performance are used to attack the Three Gorges Dam, will it have some impact? Take the world's more famous "Tomahawk cruise missile" as an example. The weight of a Tomahawk cruise missile is 1,440 kilograms, and when attacking relatively sturdy targets, the Tomahawk cruise missile will use it to penetrate the warhead. However, even if uses the Tomahawk cruise missile that penetrates the warhead, the warhead weighs only 475 kilograms, and the power generated by the explosion is not painful or itchy to the Three Gorges Dam.
Gulf War and "Saddam Bunker" during the Iraq War may be a case of evaluating the effect of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes. At that time, in order to avoid the "beheading operation" of the US military, Saddam specially built a "bunker" made of steel rods and concrete with a thickness of of 1.8 meters. According to experts at the time, at least 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles were needed to be used to penetrate Saddam's bunker.
(Aerial view of the Three Gorges Dam)
However, even the Saddam bunker with a thickness of 1.8 meters looks like a pitiful matchbox compared to the Three Gorges Dam with a width and height of hundreds of meters. is struggling to use the Tomahawk Cruise missile to penetrate Saddam's bunker, let alone a Three Gorges Dam that is like a giant?
Therefore, overall, general weapons in conventional wars are really helpless against the Three Gorges Dam.
(Site of the Three Gorges Dam Project)
So, what if the enemy wants to try "unconventional" weapons? ——I’ll give you a reassurance in advance. In fact, even if the enemy uses some "unconventional" weapons, it will be difficult for to destroy the Three Gorges Dam. Because from the paper data, it is almost impossible to destroy the Three Gorges Dam.
The first representative "unconventional" weapon is giant ground bolt . A giant ground bolt can penetrate concrete walls with a thickness of 60 meters under the effect of throwing at high altitude. It carries up to 2.7 tons of explosives, which can also pose a significant threat to most buildings.
(Giant ground bolt)
However, while the giant ground bolt has terrifying lethality and destructive power, it has a very obvious disadvantage: that is, it is too heavy. The weight of a giant ground bullet is as high as 13.6 tons. This weight means that even a B-2 strategic bomber can only carry a giant ground bomb to throw at a time. However, the Three Gorges Dam belongs to Gravity Dam in its overall construction structure. Even if a giant ground-boring bomb strikes the Three Gorges Dam, the Three Gorges Dam will not cause overall collapse due to omissions at one point. Moreover, because of the weight of the giant ground bomb, if you want to use the giant ground bomb to destroy the Three Gorges Dam, the enemy may need to deploy a large number of strategic bombers and aircraft groups. However, even today, the world's largest military power, there are only 21 stealth strategic bombers in stock. Therefore, from the perspective of the feasibility of military operations, it is not realistic to use giant ground-borrow bombs to blow up the Three Gorges Dam.
and another representative "unconventional" weapon is atomic bomb . However, with the current volume of the Three Gorges Dam, even an atomic bomb may not hurt the slightest part of the Three Gorges Dam. Some experts have conducted relevant model data analysis and concluded that is not allowed to bomb the Three Gorges Dam by the enemy using nuclear weapon , which weighs up to 1 million tons, to bomb the Three Gorges Dam, which can cause a gap of about 1,000 meters to be blown out. The length of this gap is less than half of the total length of the Three Gorges Dam. However, if we understand the weight of various nuclear weapons in the world, we will find that such a model is also not feasible in military operations: the weight of a "fat" atomic bomb in history was only 4,545 kilograms, and the weight of a Tsar bomb was only 27,000 kilograms. If the enemy wants to blow up the Three Gorges Dam with nuclear weapons, at least 37 "tsar bombs" need to be dispatched, , and such a hypothetical scenario is also not feasible in reality.
(Tsar bomb explosion site)
and The third reason why the Three Gorges Dam will not be attacked by the enemy is that even if the enemy does have the blasting ability to attack the Three Gorges Dam , it may be difficult to escape the "layers of defense" that our army has already deployed around the Three Gorges Dam. It is precisely because the Three Gorges Dam is related to the national economy and people's livelihood that after the Three Gorges Dam was landed, my country attached great importance to the protection of the Three Gorges Dam. From coastal areas, along the river, and then to near the Three Gorges Dam, our army has already established a set of integrated anti-strike system with sea, land and air. Once there is abnormal movement near the Three Gorges Dam, our army will intercept the weapons that attack the Three Gorges Dam as soon as possible, thereby ensuring the safety of the lives and property of the dam and the surrounding people.
In addition, even if the Three Gorges Dam is really hit by the enemy, we are not without a preparation plan: Because our country has established a very complete and sound communication system near the Three Gorges Dam, when we learn that the enemy may have some movement near the Three Gorges Dam, we will promptly release up to 22 billion cubic meters of stock water in the Three Gorges Dam in an orderly manner, so as to avoid the flooding of downstream river water for a while. In the lower reaches of the Yangtze River of the Three Gorges Dam, there are also many medium-sized and small reservoirs and dams, which are responsible for regulating water storage and can share the pressure of inventory water released by the Three Gorges Dam.
(Three Gorges Dam Project)
The last reason why the enemy dared not touch the Three Gorges Dam is that the Three Gorges Dam is the common pride of the Chinese people. Three Gorges Dam Project was first proposed in Mr. Sun Yat-sen's "Industrial Plan", and began to measure in the 1940s. After the founding of New China, the Three Gorges Dam has been successfully implemented after 20 years of exploration and repeated demonstrations over the past 30 years. It not only contains the hard work of Chinese workers, but also the hard work of generations of Chinese people. Once someone turns the gun to the project and turns to the people who cast this project, it is probably difficult for him to withstand the anger of the 1.4 billion Chinese people, and it is even more difficult for him to bear the revenge of a country with a nuclear power in the world.
Therefore, Three Gorges Dam is not only a project that benefits the country, but also a project that allows people to live and work in peace and contentment. It will serve as a spiritual symbol of the Chinese nation and the Chinese working people, and will always stand gloriously in the history books of time!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-