The Dam
Today I will skip lecture as I thought it will be good for me to rest another day. Will use the spare time to tidy up my research paper. The DS wants we to make some amendments and add a few annexes to the paper.
The other day, we visited Tarbela Dam on the way back from Peshawar. Water issue has always been the talk of the class since water management is currently an issue in Pakistan (see my earlier posting). This dam is certainly unique and is alleged during its construction in early 1970's to be the largest earth filled dam in the world at 470 feet in elevation and over 5,000 feet in length. The reservoir total area is about 100 sq km. It looks magnificent to me as it was my first time visit to a "real" dam (my only other visit to a dam was way back when I was in primary school - a school berkelah to a small dam at Ulu Besut) We started the visit with a short briefing at the project manager's office and then drove across the face of the dam and over both spillways. I did learn the dam has 14 Francis type turbines installed, ten 175 megawatt and four 375 megawatt units. The maintenance (which is extremely important in this business) plan has 5 of the smaller and one of the larger units down for maintenance each year. I also learned that despite having operated for some 30 years, at present there is not a plan for replacing turbines, which typically have a long life expectancy. Some things stuck out in my mind from the presentation and visit; first, the Indus River system has an incredibly high silt load. So high that it is claimed it would take 50,000 dump trucks per day to keep up with the daily deposition of sediment in the reservoir behind the dam. The project manager related the reservoir is losing approximately 1 percent of its storage capacity each year. At that rate, this dam will be rendered useless by the year 2025. The control room still had the same old technology and looked like a scene from "Dr No". the room was like stepping back into the 1970s, when the dam was built. The control complex has not been updated significantly in 30 years. I wonder where they're going to find spares when stuff starts to break in here. The other thing that stuck out for me was the number of staff committed to operating this facility - it exceeds 2,000 people!.
After the visit we had lunch and it was special indeed. We had fried fresh water fish !!!. Well, you definitely can guess where the fish come from.. We had oranges after lunch, as this region supposedly produced Pakistan's best variety.. I think we do have this variety "Kino" in some of the supermarkets in Malaysia.
(For a satellite image of the dam click here)
The other day, we visited Tarbela Dam on the way back from Peshawar. Water issue has always been the talk of the class since water management is currently an issue in Pakistan (see my earlier posting). This dam is certainly unique and is alleged during its construction in early 1970's to be the largest earth filled dam in the world at 470 feet in elevation and over 5,000 feet in length. The reservoir total area is about 100 sq km. It looks magnificent to me as it was my first time visit to a "real" dam (my only other visit to a dam was way back when I was in primary school - a school berkelah to a small dam at Ulu Besut) We started the visit with a short briefing at the project manager's office and then drove across the face of the dam and over both spillways. I did learn the dam has 14 Francis type turbines installed, ten 175 megawatt and four 375 megawatt units. The maintenance (which is extremely important in this business) plan has 5 of the smaller and one of the larger units down for maintenance each year. I also learned that despite having operated for some 30 years, at present there is not a plan for replacing turbines, which typically have a long life expectancy. Some things stuck out in my mind from the presentation and visit; first, the Indus River system has an incredibly high silt load. So high that it is claimed it would take 50,000 dump trucks per day to keep up with the daily deposition of sediment in the reservoir behind the dam. The project manager related the reservoir is losing approximately 1 percent of its storage capacity each year. At that rate, this dam will be rendered useless by the year 2025. The control room still had the same old technology and looked like a scene from "Dr No". the room was like stepping back into the 1970s, when the dam was built. The control complex has not been updated significantly in 30 years. I wonder where they're going to find spares when stuff starts to break in here. The other thing that stuck out for me was the number of staff committed to operating this facility - it exceeds 2,000 people!.
After the visit we had lunch and it was special indeed. We had fried fresh water fish !!!. Well, you definitely can guess where the fish come from.. We had oranges after lunch, as this region supposedly produced Pakistan's best variety.. I think we do have this variety "Kino" in some of the supermarkets in Malaysia.
(For a satellite image of the dam click here)
posted by besutian at 10:05 PM
1 Comments:
Ayoo my friend why so careless one? bila dah 'matang' nih kena la hati2 lebih skit.... the 'bouncing back to normal' part takes so much longer laaa :) in fact wheni'm working out, my greatest worry is ALWAYS any kind of injury and one of the main reasons why i stay clear of jungle tracks and such (walaupun more interesting) - tersadong root pun cukup la.
The missus must have been out of her mind with worry... kesian dia tau!!!! so take care la ok. and osso happy anniversary to u both, semoga kekal bahagia dunia akhirat :)
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