John Gittings in the Guardian reports that Cracks appear in Three Gorges dam:
China says that 80 cracks have appeared in the Three Gorges dam, only days after the huge reservoir behind it was filled for the first time.Since this is a Communist Chinese government project, I'm getting a rubber duckies premonition.
"If water enters these cracks, there could be negative effects, so we are fixing them very carefully," Pan Jiazhong, head of the dam's inspection group, said yesterday.
He denied that the cracks threatened the dam's safety, but said they could expand and cause leaking unless repaired.
The reservoir now extends upstream for 219km (350 miles), with a maximum water depth of 135 metres (440ft).
A failure of the dam could have catastrophic consequences downstream in the fertile and densely populated middle Yangtze valley.
...
Mr Pan said then that it was "too early to be proud" of the dam. "We have a long way to go ... I hope we will do our best to build a first-class project rather than a dam with 10-metre long cracks!"
The final inspection showed that some of the vertical cracks on the dam that had been repaired had reopened, "even though we put a great deal of money and effort into the repair work".
He said the dam would face its first real test in the severe floods expected this summer.
