Three Gorges Dam

The Three Gorges Dam was completed in 2012 after nearly two decades of construction, a concrete gravity dam 2,335 metres long and 181 metres high whose generators give it the largest installed capacity of any power station in the world. Ships pass through a five-stage lock system taking three to four hours, or use the ship lift completed in 2016, which carries vessels up to three thousand tonnes in a water-filled caisson raised about a hundred and thirteen metres in around forty minutes, the largest such lift ever built. Viewing platforms at Tanziling and beside the locks overlook both. The project's costs, in displacement, sediment and ecology, remain widely debated.

History

Sun Yat-sen imagined a great dam below the Three Gorges in 1919, and in 1944 John L. Savage, chief design engineer of the US Bureau of Reclamation, surveyed the site and drew up a Yangtze River Project, for which some 54 Chinese engineers trained in the United States. The dam was approved in 1992 and building began on 14 December 1994; its body was finished in 2006, the reservoir reached its full level of 175 metres in 2010, the last of the 32 main turbines came into use in 2012, and the ship lift, the last major part, was completed in 2015 (Wikipedia, Three Gorges Dam).

What's there

• The dam wall - two and a third kilometres of concrete across the Yangtze.
• The ship lift - vessels raised a hundred metres in a water-filled caisson.
• The five-stage locks - ships stepping up or down over several hours.
• The Tanziling viewpoint - the overview of the whole structure.

When to go

April to June and September to November; summer haze reduces visibility from the viewpoints. Water discharge, when the spillways open, is a spectacle in the flood season but is not scheduled for visitors. Passports are required for entry.

Before you go

Entry requires a passport and security screening, and the site is a controlled area. Haze frequently obscures the view. Watching a full lock or lift cycle takes hours. Interpretation presents the project uncritically.

Nearby

Yichang lies east; the gorges begin upstream.

Key facts