Enormous New Dam Fails In Brazil

New Scientist ^ | 7-10-2006

[blam]

Enormous new dam fails in Brazil

10 July 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.

GIANT cracks have opened in one of the world's tallest dams, just months after completion. The cracks appeared after a tunnel collapsed on 20 June beneath the 200-metre-high Campos Novos dam in southern Brazil, and the reservoir rapidly emptied. At one point, 4000 cubic metres of water (more than enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool) were rushing downstream every second towards a second dam on the river Canoas.

"If this had happened during the rainy season, and the two reservoirs had been full, water would likely have poured over the lower dam and it might have been destroyed. That would have been a major disaster, with perhaps hundreds killed," says Patrick McCully of the International Rivers Network, a California-based group that campaigns against large dams. Between them, the two dams can hold more than 2 cubic kilometres of water.

The dam's owner, Enercan, a consortium of Brazilian power companies, has revealed little about the accident. It is reported to have been trying to patch holes in a leaking tunnel since October, before the second tunnel failed catastrophically last month.

[investigateworld]

Hoover Dam has series miles of copper tubing within it's concrete so chilled water could be pumped through and carry off the heat that concrete generates as it cures. Forgot the fancy term for it.

[Cobra64]

I heard that the concrete is still curing. Amazing what we did 70+ years ago. Now we can't even rebuild this:

[Richard-SIA]

Gonna take more than Band-Aid's and super-glue to fix that!

Looks like a do-over, as in do it over from the beginning.

[Doomonyou]

[tubebender]

I have every right to raise these questions because we are dealing with a group of no growth anarchist's affiliated with a similar group in the North West that planted fake evidence in a Forest Service study looking for endangered species in a EIR for a logging plan.

If you can spare a moment of your narrow mindedness you should read this...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1649116/posts

[gridlock]

Yikes!

[Larry Lucido]

Dang, how do you fix THAT?

[gridlock]

Dang, how do you fix THAT?

And if that doesn't work...

[Rome2000]

Hoochie Coochie Construction!!!

[TheLion]

"Dang, how do you fix THAT?"

Rebuild it!

[Gideon7]

Don't they know they have to exterminate those wild earth boaring creatures before they build a dam.

Yeah, those creatures from the movie Tremors are tough to get rid of.

[alancarp]

Allllll right, now... we're getting personal!

[SierraWasp]

Yes, it has become almost commonplace for these militant EnvironMental Pagag religionists to plant all sorts of supposed rare and endagered flora and fauna, or to play with photographic things with especially narrow angle shots that leave stuff out and even to the point of deliberately faking stuff with photoshop!!!

I'm not sure ctdonath2 was questioning your veracity but somehow thought you couldn't figure out what you were really looking at. Either way I can see how you'd think ctdonath2 was a little insensitive at best and a little insulting at worst.

Oh well. It's 7:38 so time for another carafe of wine, right???

[SierraWasp]

Well frankly Erasmus, you don't git to!!! So fergedaboutit!!!

[ctdonath2]

Relax, bucko. Was just pointing out some plain indicators of non-photoshopping.

[ctdonath2]

Having examined many "photoshopped" pictures (and those not but accused thereof), I was simply making the relevant suggestion of looking a little deeper at the images before jumping to the "conspiracy" line of reasoning.

[rvoitier]

Call them engineers from Boston.

Empuje grande?

[concretebob]

You don't. You blow it up and start over.

jeeeez Louise..

I wonder what the head pressure is on that.