Posted on 01/20/2023 9:32:52 AM PST by SpeedyInTexas
Built near a spewing volcano, it was the biggest infrastructure project ever in this country, a concrete colossus bankrolled by Chinese cash and so important to Beijing that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, spoke at the 2016 inauguration.
Today, thousands of cracks have emerged in the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, government engineers said, raising concerns that Ecuador’s biggest source of power could break down. At the same time, the Coca River’s mountainous slopes are eroding, threatening to damage the dam.
“We could lose everything,” said Fabricio Yépez, an engineer at the University of San Francisco in Quito who has closely tracked the project’s problems. “And we don’t know if it could be tomorrow or in six months.”
It is one of many Chinese-financed projects around the world plagued with construction flaws.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Archived version: https://archive.ph/wJItV
Hey - Speedy is posting about China now!
Maybe we’ll actually find some agreement....
Not to be picky, but that seems like an odd statement. Is the failure an absolute certainty? Is the longest we can hope for a mere six months? I understand that the situation is shaky and that failure is a distinct possibility. But bracketing the disaster between "tomorrow" and "six months" seems weirdly precise -- sort of like a 3.46 degree rise in temperature in the next 100 years.
China is the next Russia it has to be discredited. Government propaganda is disseminated through the mainstream media.
Not supporting China but not being suckered by a wave of propaganda either.
“Since the 2016 opening, officials from the state electricity utility have found more than 17,000 cracks in the power plant’s eight turbines, according to the state utility. It blames the fissures on faulty steel imported from China.”
Just wait ‘till the Three Gorges Dam fails. That’ll be a show.
China discredits its self.
They don’t need my help.
I actually took a river cruise from Chongqing to Wuhan through the 3 gorges before the dam was built. 1993.
Chinese construction engineers likely know what they are doing. Cronyism, highercrahtical issues, face/ego issues, graft, and corruption all compound to make deadly mega projects. The death toll and destruction will be nearly unimaginable. For reference see castlewood canyon dam break in Colorado. Good dam, bad understanding of the terrain it was on.
...Ecuadorean engineers...considered it a risky venture due to its...location near an active volcano.
Hmmm
Pretty damning, from a source one would expect to be sympathetic to leftists:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/world/americas/ecuador-china-dam.html
Massive corruption in deals between a leftist Latin American gov’t and China? Who could have guessed?
Yeah, I know, bad pun, and no “/s”...
;-)
Well. That took me on a three hour read about the subject.
Interesting and only partly about politics. What a change from the normal we get these days.
The chicoms built a dam in an area of active volcanism and changed the dynamic of sedimentation that once preserved the waterfalls resulting in their loss.
What would be really interesting is to learn what they found in the 25 km tunnel that moves water from the diversion dam to the power house.
So they are worried about loosing everything.
And they might well loose everything....
EXCEPT the debt.
Wanna bet on that?
I lived in Communist China for a year in 1989-1990. I saw many buildings there that looked like they were built 40-50 years ago. I asked my friends when they were built... and it turns out that they had been constructed about two years prior!
Many buildings and infrastructure items in that Communist hellhole begin to break down and seemingly need replacement within five years.
Communism offers no incentive to actually build according to spec. The only incentive is grift to the max and use the loot to eventually emigrate to the United States, which is exactly what they do.
So to all the third-world spit-holes that looked to China for low-cost infrastructure development, I say that there is no free lunch. You done been played, suckers!
I heard it submerged some beautiful scenery.
I watched a lot of videos made by two white guys living in China. They confirm what you say. They drove through many neighborhoods on their motorcycles and interviewed residents, who complained of their homes falling apart and shoddily constructed, all only a few years old. Much of what they recorded about China showed an indifference in regards to quality, whether it be buildings or food. They finally had to leave China due to government trying to go after them for bringing it to light for the world.
3 Gorges will eventually be a victim of its own success, it altered so much riparian flow that a 100-year rain event, just a simple Theta-E funnel like the Waverly NC 2021 flash flood (21 inches in 24 hours), stuck just west of the dam for a day, will top 200 metres at +/-100,000m/s and the center will pop like a pimple.
We are just pawns in the big picture but there is a big picture the picture of pushing Russia and China to the curb.
Will it benefit you and me in the end or is it too little, too late is the West too morally bankrupt to win the game of world economic domination?
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