One of the most impressive structures of recent decades is certainly the Three Gorges Dam in China:
Construction of this enormous dam began in 1992 and lasted more than 15 years.
Located in Hubei province, it is the second largest dam in the world after Itaipu, situated between Paraguay and Brazil.
It supplies water to a 22.5-gigawatt hydroelectric power plant,
generating 98.8 terawatt-hours of electricity annually – making it the most powerful dam in the world.
The Three Gorges Dam is 185 meters high and 2,310 meters long.
The dam creates a lake with an area of over 1,000 square kilometers, a length of over 600 km, and a capacity of 39 billion cubic meters of water.
The power plant is equipped with 32 giant Francis turbines.
Its output is sufficient to cover 3% of China's electricity consumption.
Many environmental groups have protested and continue to protest vehemently against the dam.
It's important to know that during its construction and to fill the reservoir, 1,300 archaeological sites, 3 cities, 140 towns, and 1,352 villages were flooded; 2 million residents have had to be relocated so far – and by 2023, it is expected that just as many Chinese will have to leave their homes and move again.
Even some animal and plant species have disappeared as a result of this mammoth project.
NASA scientists have calculated that the incredibly large mass of water behind the dam is enough to change the Earth's rotational speed – increasing the length of a day by 60 billionths of a second. While this is a vanishingly small value, it is measurable.