World’s Biggest Hydro Project Set For China

World's Biggest Hydro Project

A hydro-electric plant is being planned by the Chinese in TibetMega dam which is located on the Yarlung Tsangpo river. The project would be the biggest hydro-electric project on the Brahmaputra river and an enormous growth of reusuable power for the Himalayas. The problem that is now facing the Chinese aside from the actual construction are objections from India which is located at the bottom of the Yarlung Tsangpo River. India fears that the Chinese are planning to divert the course of the river.

This information was related to the Guardian by the deputy general secretary of the China Society for Hydropower Engineering, Zhang, Boting. According to Zhang a 38 gigawatt hydropower plant half as big as the Three Gorges dam and half as big as the United Kingdom's national grid has been put on the drawing board.

Again according to Zhang, the dam would save more than 200m tonnes of carbon a year. In equivalent terms, that amount of carbon reduction is like reducing one third of the UK's carbon output.

Another opinion was given by Tashi Tsering who works as a Tibetan scholar of environmental policy at the University of British Columbia. He says that the Chinese are planning to put more than 28 dams on the same river. Tsering is a publisher of a map of all dam projects that have been planned by the Chinese.

Using his inside sources, Tsering concludes that the Tsangpo-Brahmaputa river in Tibet will be China's main focus in its search for hydro electric power supply sources.

This river flows down towards India and Bangladesh and those two countries might voice some concern over the building of those hydro electric plants. This river and the Congo are the two largest sources of river energy on earth. Objections are being skirted by China with reports from Chinese engineers like Yan Zhiyong who is the general manager of China Hydropower Engineering Consulting Group. He says, "Tibet's resources will be converted into economic advantage. The major technical constraints on damming the Yarlung Tsampo have been overcome.

The two countries that will be affected by this project, India and China have agreed to share information on future plans to build hydro electric plants on the Tsangpo Brahmaputra. India has voiced its concerns through its media that Beijing is planning to channel water away from India to wet the dry northern plains of China. Tsering is downplaying India's concerns by insisting that the plans the Chinese have designed are for hydropower not water diversion. Making another what sounds like a bizarre prediction, Tsering says that, "The laws of physics will nt allow water diversion from the Great Bend."

India's fears are that the more than 28 dams and the hydropower plant could very easily prove that premise false.

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