The Engineering Marvel That China Hopes Will Help Wean It Off Foreign Energy (wsj.com) 56
China has begun construction of a $167 billion hydropower facility on Tibet's Yarlung Tsangpo River that would generate triple the output of the Three Gorges Dam. The project employs a run-of-the-river design, drilling deep tunnels through mountains to bypass the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, where the river drops nearly two vertical miles over 300 miles. Water diverted through the tunnels will drive turbines at both ends without creating a large reservoir. The river currently produces just 2% of its hydropower potential. A $7 billion transmission network will deliver electricity to Guangdong province, Hong Kong, and Macau. China imported nearly a quarter of its energy supply in 2023.
Let's hope (Score:4, Interesting)
...that they do a better job than last time [wikipedia.org].
China can and does produce some of the best work in the world these days... but they only bother to put in the effort if someone is looking over their shoulder the whole time. If they think they can get away with it, they will cut every corner imaginable. This being a prestige government project it will probably get the oversight it needs to not be a disaster... probably.
=Smidge=
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A risk besides climate change is war with Taiwan. During war, Taiwan may use cruises missile to take out dams. They would probably focus on military targets at first, but if and when civilians in Taiwan get whacked, then the kid gloves are off.
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You read the part where this is a run of the river dam, right?
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I think after 50 years they will do better. The issue is that with climate change causing droughts I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have the same problems Venezuela has where the River just cannot drive the turbines enough.
To be fair, "mistakes" during construction and lack of proper maintenance are a big cause of the problem in Venezuela. Those factors would be bad enough, but drought surely adds to the problems.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne... [telegraph.co.uk]
That was less than 50 years ago and is what I immediately thought of, because it's actually impressive.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05... [npr.org]
That was just a few years ago. Considerably less funny, because a bunch of people died that time.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/07... [cnn.com]
That was earlier this year. As a culture it seems they have learned basically nothing when it comes to doing a job right for the sake of doing it right; if they don't have someone breathing down their necks making
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I was pretty explicit that China can and does produce best-in-class products. Not even throwing shade that way.
What I am saying is, if there is an opportunity to do anything less to make a little extra profit, they will. This is why counterfeit components [aeri.com] and products are so ubiquitous; if you're not a billion-dollar company that's able to twist some arms and make sure quality standards are met, Chinese manufacturers will absolutely produce the cheapest, scammiest shit they can get away with. China is pure
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Re: Let's hope (Score:2)
Don't be a hater, we all know you'd do anything to live here.
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Re: Let's hope (Score:2)
Do you judge entire races like you do entire countries?
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Re: Let's hope (Score:2)
The way the summary reads this is not a dam, the main article is paywalled.
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The 1950s wasn't "the last time."
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That's hardly "last time". There are at least 5,000 dams in China, and most of the big ones were build this century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They absolutely know what they are doing. The scale is like nothing else on Earth, but they have proven time and time again they can do this stuff. We should be trying to emulate their success with infrastructure.
It's like saying "I hope they do a better job than last time" and pointing to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge every time a new one is built in the US.
So ... (Score:1)
Re:So ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to assume that's a joke, 'cause this new dam is a little more than 1000 times the generating capacity... (60 gigawatts vs. 54 megawatts)
=Smidge=
Re:So ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So ... (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that it is not creating a lake and flooding any ecosystems, and is not holding up water needed for use by other nations down-stream, are huge pluses also. Its main impact on the natural environment from the water diversion looks like to shut down extremely remote water falls and rapids that are so remote that few people have ever seen them.
Non-paywalled link (Score:5, Informative)
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I'd be extremely concerned if I was India. This kind of thing also happens in other regions of the world. Mexico is also concerned about the Colorado Rivers throughput by the time it reaches them. Ethiopia has a large dam project as well and Egypt and Sudan are quite concerned for the exact same reasons.
Re:Non-paywalled link (Score:5, Informative)
India and Bangladesh, who are downstream, are unsurprisingly less thrilled.
While this is true it seems to just be a "general principles" objection to China doing stuff with their essential waters -- aggravated by China's imperial behavior: a lack of transparency and a failure to consult with the neighboring countries.
China is not apparently diverting or reducing the end-to-end water flow in any way -- it is not even creating a reservoir that might temporarily affect water flow. China is simply extracting energy from the river as it falls off the plateau -- there is a sharp bend around Namcha Barwa mountain where the river drops 300 m, and the plan is to tunnel through the mountain and divert the water from the bend through the generators.
Non-Pay-Walled Source of Information (Score:4, Informative)
Right here. [hindustantimes.com]
Interesting the largest water wall of this river (longest in Tibet, fifth longest in China) was photographed for the first time in 1987. It required a helicopter to do it. That is what I call remote and inaccessible.
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They use drones to get materials into place now. There isn't really anywhere that is considered inaccessible now. Proper sci-fi stuff.
More important is to wean off coal (Score:3)
Displace the dirtiest energy source first, coal, in both its domestic and imported forms.
Then do the same for oil, then do the same for natural gas. Order things by the pollution generated. Not by foreign vs domestic. Not by price.
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What likely concerns China more than anything is energy independence. They are clearly looking to start a fight over territory, almost certainly starting with Taiwan. As it is now China could have their economy, and therefore military, left crippled by a blockade on energy imports.
The rumor is that China is planning to take Taiwan by force as soon as 2027. That don't math as this dam is not expected to be operational until 2033. Either the dam is not part of their plan, or the plan is not to start a fig
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"Energy production by source over the past 70 years has seen a shift away from coal to natural gas and renewables
US emissions down 13%, China's up 38% (Score:1)
And you're completely ignoring Americas biggest use fossil fuels, oil.
"In 2023, China was the biggest carbon polluter in the world by far, having released 11.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO). Although the U.S. was the second-biggest emitter, with 4.9 GtCO in 2023, its CO emissions have declined by 13 percent since 2010. By comparison, China’s CO emissions have increased by more than 38 percent in the same period. "" https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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They are.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org]
Ignore the misleading headlines about them building coal plants. They are, but only to replace older ones with new ones that are cleaner and crucially better able to ramp their output to fit around renewables. China has likely already peaked for coal use and emissions.
Re:More important is to wean off coal (Score:4, Informative)
They are. https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org]
Not really, the article is misleading. It is referring to the percentage of power generated by coal. (1) It ignores coals used for other demand. Basically it's conflating coal used for electrical use and total coal usage. Two different metrics. (2) The percentage is going down because renewables are growing faster than coal is growing. Coal is still growing though. Notice below that coal generated power is up for the first half 2024. Which includes the one month you cite.
Ignore the misleading headlines about them building coal plants. They are, but only to replace older ones with new ones that are cleaner and crucially better able to ramp their output to fit around renewables. China has likely already peaked for coal use and emissions.
China has not peaked emissions. The Paris accord allows them to keeping increasing emission until 2030, and now they are hinting they may continue increasing emissions after that.
China is pursuing a lowest cost fuel first policy, and they are burning coal as fast as they can dig it up and import it. It really is inexcusable to replace coal with coal, a new natural gas plant would emit less pollution than a new coal plant. But they seem more concerned with cost than pollution.
"[Jul 26, 2023 } It was a bad week for anyone who thought China would cooperate on emissions reduction. President Xi Jinping reiterated that his country would set its own path on the issue and not be influenced by outside factors, according to the Washington Post and Bloomberg. This contradicts Xi’s 2015 Paris Agreement pledges to reduce its carbon emissions at the latest after 2030."
https://www.heritage.org/globa... [heritage.org]
"[October 08, 2024] Despite its commitment to "phase down" coal, China recently has been permitting and constructing coal plants at rates not seen in a decade." "China consumes over half of the world’s coal and contributes more than 20% of global CO2 emissions from coal combustion.""
https://today.ucsd.edu/story/d... [ucsd.edu]
"China’s coal-fired power plants generated 59.6 percent of the country’s electricity in the first half of 2024. China’s coal-fired generation from January to June was 2,793.5 terawatt hours, which was 2.4 percent higher than the same months in 2023 and the highest amount for the first half of the year since at least 2015." "Power sector carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels was 2.826 billion metric tons during the first half of 2024–2.4 percent higher than the same months in 2023.""
"China’s imports of thermal coal from the seaborne market, used mainly to generate electricity, were 168.73 million metric tons in the first six months of the year, up 8.5 percent from 155.51 million in the same period in 2023. This was the strongest first half in China’s history." "China’s coal production rebounded in June, with output of all grades of coal rising to a six-month high of 405.38 million tons, which was 3.6 percent above the same month in 2023.""
https://www.instituteforenergy... [institutef...search.org]
"China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023""
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ch... [carbonbrief.org]
"Share of coal in emissions 79% of total CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, 2022"
Share of coal in electricity 61.7% of
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You realize 2025 is more than half over?
You realize the data cited was one month in 2024, and the rebuttal included six months of 2024 including that cited month?
Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. (Score:1)
How does the USA compare? A bit of web searching got me this: https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
According to the US EIA imports made up 17% of U.S. energy supply in 2024, the lowest share in nearly 40 years. That's good right? If China is seeking energy independence then should not every other nation also seek energy independence?
While China is seeking energy independence I'm seeing this considered a bad thing for nations of Europe. There's a certain segment of the population want Europe to run undersea
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here's something like 60 nuclear power reactors currently under construction right now, and about half are in China. Should we follow China's lead on energy policy?
Yes absolutely but the question is how. If we want to follow their lead on energy policy shouldn't we also consider following their lead on how they structure their nuclear energy sectors?
I mean we can look at the list of reactors getting built https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
What do pretty much all those nations have in common? A state owned and/or public enterprise that has the authority to plan, construct and operate the plants and are heavily state subsidized, something America has been averse to doi
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Yes I agree with you, the ability to craft regulations around the goal of building new plants with public oversight rather than regulations being a check on private businesses makes a big difference.
That and the funding since the state can treat nuclear as what it is: a big money sink up front but profitable in the long term. The state can fund something knowing that it will not pay off for a decade or so since it can collect from the economic activity the energy itself generate and nuclear is purely rate
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Past some given early stage, that's it. The project is going forward, the window for complaints and lawsuits is closed.
I believe I have heard from a lot of transit wonks that this is how many European and Asian countries do most major projects. There is a deadline for lawsuits and objections and once that date is past if any of them have not succeeded then project is happening.
Maybe someone will sue the project out of existence on the behalf of some frog, maybe political leaders will change and the new ones will hate nuclear power.
These are all reasons you don't do it with a simple EO or contract but actual legislation that sets actual goals for this office tasked with this. Same with funding, the government can effectively self fund but if you are private even if you find a
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Without legislation to prevent something from stopping work, the risk won't go away regardless of who is funding it. And I'm not enthusiastic about it being my tax dollars at risk. I'd like it to be privately funded, though I'm fine with government loans and guarantees so long as there are rules in place that won't leave you and I holding the bag for a cancelled project.
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Then in the matter on how this new hydroelectric dam could impact freshwater supplies to China's neighbors, but I've gone on long enough so I'll leave that be for now.
Probably not so much. It's a "run of the river" plant. Which means minimal storage. What goes in at the top comes out at the bottom.
If they have any migratory fish species (like salmon or steelhead), diverting too much water through the power plant could disrupt their migration. And result in fish pate coming out the turbine discharge.
Belongs to TIbet (Score:4)
The revenues should go to Tibet, not China. And yes, Tibet should be independent.
Good luck lol (Score:1)
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Falling apart? No, not really. There is no evidence of this. Sediment load is higher than anticipated, but it's certainly not failing. Some have claimed the dam is deforming during flood season, but that is just an artifact of stitching satellite photos together.
If it ever did fail, though, it would wipe out millions of lives, and devastate not only a large swathe of China, but other countries as well.