The facts about the Mesopotamian super hydroelectric power plant: built on the cliff, the second tallest in the world

To build the entire earth and rock dam of the Mesopotamian super-hydroelectricity, it takes 20,000 tons of explosives, equivalent to an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The Mesopotamian Hydroelectric Station on the Yalong River, is the leading upstream control project among seven cascades planned and built on the mainstream of the Yalong River in Sichuan Province, China. At the time of construction, it was the tallest earth-rock dam in China and the second tallest in the world, second only to the Nurek hydroelectric dam on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan.

The Mesopotamia hydropower station has a great offset and adjustment benefit for downstream power stations, and has the ability to adjust for many years, greatly improving the unreasonable power supply structure of the Grid. Sichuan-Chongqing during the flood season as well as regulating the lack of electricity in the dry season. The main purpose of the development of this power plant is to generate electricity, store water and energy, share the task of preventing floods in the middle and lower Yangtze River, improve the transportation conditions of the Yangtze river channel in the future. dry season. Its economic benefits are considerable. The power station dam construction site is located on a section of about 1.8 km below the mouth of the Qingda River, the main stream of the Yalong River, with a control area of ​​65,599 square kilometers.

The Mesopotamia hydroelectric station is located downstream of the main estuary of the Yalong River and its tributary of the Qingda River in Sichuan. The average annual flow at the dam site is 664 cubic meters per second, and the reservoir's normal storage is 2865 meters, the holding capacity is 10.154 billion cubic meters and the adjusted storage capacity is 6.560 billion cubic meters, respectively. The largest dam height of the core wall rock dam of the Mesopotamian hydropower plant is nearly 300 meters. The annual flow of water is 20.9 billion cubic meters.

The total filling volume of the dam body of the Mesopotamian Hydropower Station is 43 million cubic meters. This number is equivalent to the volume of 6 National Stadium Beijing, China. The highest slope of the Mesopotamia Hydropower Station is 684 meters, 52 meters higher than the Shanghai Tower (632 meters), the tallest building in China. The dam of the Mesopotamian Hydropower Station is 295 meters high, equivalent to the height of a 100-story building.

The total length of the metro station of the Mesopotamia Hydropower Station is 275.94 meters, the maximum height is 66.80 meters and the width is 28.40 meters. The total storage capacity of the Mesopotamia Hydropower Station is more than 10 billion cubic meters, which can meet the annual water consumption of 25 million people. The maximum flood discharge speed of the Mesopotamia Hydropower Station is 54 m/s, ranking second in the world. The maximum single-hole discharge of the tunnel-type spillway is 4,076 cubic meters per second, equivalent to the force exerted by a convoy of 160 25-ton trucks at a speed of 200 km/h.

The annual electricity output of the Mesopotamian hydropower plant is 11 billion kWh, which can increase the annual power output of the lower Yalong River, the lower Jinsha River and the Yangtze River mainstream by about 34.2 billion kWh in dry season. Once completed, it can reduce raw coal consumption by about 13.3 million tons and carbon dioxide emissions by 21.3 million tons per year, equivalent to building 4 coal mines with an annual output of 4 million tons. ton.

Construction of the project began in October 2014. The Yalong River originates at the southern foot of the Bayankala Mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and flows through the Garze, Liangshan and Panzhihua autonomous regions. of Sichuan province. The main stream of the Yalong River has a total length of 1,571 km, a natural subsidence of 3,830 meters, and ranks third among the 13 planned hydropower plants across China. The total approved investment is 66.457 billion yuan, expected to be completed in 2023.

As the name suggests, rock dams are barrier dams made of soil, rock, or local mixed materials, which are very different from concrete arch dams and gravity dams. The pouring volume of a concrete dam is less than a few million tons, for a giant dam like the Three Gorges Dam, the volume of concrete poured is even more than 70 million tons. The cost of each ton of concrete is more than 100 yuan (360,000 VND), so the cost of concrete alone has reached hundreds of millions of yuan. If in a delta area or a place with convenient road traffic, this concrete price is still acceptable; but the Mesopotamia hydroelectric station is located on high mountains and deep valleys, transportation is extremely inconvenient, and that will cause the price of concrete to increase sharply. In addition, when traffic is hindered by bad weather, roads are difficult to supply in time, which will seriously affect the project progress. So,

The core wall at the center of the dam is filled with clay with good water resistance, while the protective shell is filled with extremely compressible sand and gravel. This sand and gravel have been strictly screened, not only their own strength must be very high, but the size must be uniform and well-graded to be able to fill the gap between the sand and gravel in the process of accumulation, improve overall dam strength. The sand and gravel themselves do not have strength, the rock dams need to rely on the accumulation of sand and gravel to maintain their strength, so the thickness of the earth and rock dam is usually very large.

The amount of sand and gravel filled by the Mesopotamian Hydropower Station has reached 100 million tons, more than the Three Gorges Dam. To maintain such a huge supply of sand and gravel, the project to build the Mesopotamia Hydropower Station had to demolish several mountains to make a quarry. To build the entire dam, it takes 20,000 tons of explosives, equivalent to an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.