“1. immediate (and large) loss of life
2. loss of a large chunk of farmland (food)
3. loss of a large chunk of power generation
what other consequences am I forgetting?”
There can be secondary issues with major disasters, like social unrest/looting, sanitation/disease in refugee camps, etc., like after Hurricane Katrina.
Remember the long process of recovering bodies from the World Trade Center after 9-11, with thousands missing? That would be so dwarfed, with millions missing.
Potentially, there could be a string of Fukushima-like nuclear power plant malfunctions, releasing radioactive contamination. I have not heard how their designs would hold up under such conditions. Hopefully, they have emergency shut down on a hair trigger.
Global supply chains are excessively concentrated along that river, for many products. The Yangtze is a major part of the industrial heartland of China. The Pearl River Delta in the South (Guangzhou, Shenzhen) is the center of the electronics industry, but a lot of chemicals and industrial parts are along the Yangtze, as well as a lot of prime farmland.
Pharmaceuticals and biomedical (test kits, PPE, etc.) have been mentioned as particularly concentrated there.
Just one example is the precursor chemicals used to produce the synthetic opioid fentanyl, that is the cause of so many overdose deaths in the USA - they come predominately from one huge company in Wuhan.
Nikkei Asian Review talked about the Japanese auto industry - almost all their car companies have production facilities along there.
If even one part is not available, engines can’t be assembled. For the want of a nail... the war was lost.
So supply chain disruptions would ripple widely through the Global economy.
In addition to the facilities, the skills and knowledge of the people in those industries - the human capital - could be lost. Those experts are concentrated where the production is concentrated, and they cannot easily be replaced, to reconstitute production elsewhere, just by throwing money at it. It takes years or schooling and experience.
In the current Global environment, many firms, and many National Governments of major industrialized Nations, would likely not return to re-establish lost facilities in China, after a total loss.
There would be financial strains on China as well - huge expenses, and a huge drop in tax revenues. Massive debt defaults. They are primed for a half dozen different financial crises already, without a Biblical flood to deal with.
2. loss of a large chunk of farmland (food)
3. loss of a large chunk of power generation
what other consequences am I forgetting?”
It is not just the loss of the generation from the dam but the disruption of the electric grid. China's power generation system is based on regional power generation companies operated by one or more provinces grouped together. China has thirty or forty provinces and special administrative regions(some large cities are treated as separate provinces like Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Chongquing, etc..) Historically these provincial grids did not tie to each other. When Three Gorges was being planned the decisions was made to connect as many regional grids together as possible. The central nexus of this being Three Gorges.
Tying everything together allowed the use of the abundant hydro power provided by three gorges to be used as the peak power source for most of central China. Most Chinese power plants are coal fired with significant nuclear power now available as well. Neither of these sources of power cycle for peak loading well. It takes time to change the output from a nuke or coal plant. Hydro power on the other hand can be ramped up and down quickly and is an ideal source of peak power for generating grids.
The potential loss of Three Gorges would cause problems not just from the loss of the power itself. But, also from the resulting disruptions to the grid, loss of peak power capability, and probable isolation of different segments of the power grid.
I’m so glad that this has finally become a news story.It will be of worldwide importance. When I first started covering it over a month ago no one was interested,now its finally getting legs.ANd it should.
there has been all kinds of damage and dislocation already,Wuhan City(home of the wuflu) with 12 million people has several feet of water in it now when the dam goes no telling what will happen there.
SHanghai is also in the danger zone.
ok, quite a bit i hadnt thought of there. thanks for the reply