Monday, October 18, 2010

HydroPower disaster

Great site showing how devastating a dam disaster can be.


http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/gonzo/4344681

40 comments:

  1. Why do things like this always happen in Russia.I wonder what would happen it this happened in the U.S and what would people then say about hydropower.-uriah

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  2. This wouldn't happen in the U.S. Turbine two had a life span of 30 years and it was 29 years 10 months old on the date of the accident. The U.S. wouldn't do that. They would replace the turbine with a newer model way before that. The U.S. is more concered with safty and making sure lives are not at stake.

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  3. Silly Russians they always wait till the last minute so they can save money well looks like that theory has come back to bite the in the butt. Thank God I live in America, at least most of the time.

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  4. hhhaaha stupid russians who knew they even had hydro power i just figured all their water was frozen anyways. They don't even care, the US would care though, wed make sure the people who didnt die in the accident, were fired and put in jail. hhaha

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  5. The size of that amazed me. I guess i didnt realize how big dams really are. Thats really sad all those people died, but the people who built that dam should of had a back up plan just in case something like that did happen. The dam seemed really power efficent though and created a lot of megawatts. I think it was worth it that it lasted all those years.

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  6. This is actually pretty funny, with such a monstrosity of a project how do they not take ALL necessary precautions to ensure stuff like this won't happen?

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  7. i believe a disaster like that should be avoided. its funny that they didnt take any consideration to the fact that this could happen, big mistake for russia -MARISSA!!!!!!!!!

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  8. Oh wow thats crazy. you'd think that people would realize that it might collapse without good maitnance because it was near its expected lifetime anyway. that's too bad but its their own fault

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  9. i just understand how they couldn't realize that its about to break. you have to keep the maintenance kept up, especially if you realize its that close to its limits. 29 and 10 months... come on...

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  10. Dams are so big, you'd think they would have thought of all the possible negative outcomes when building that something that large. collapsing would definitely be a possibility.

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  11. I think now workers will be more carefully in Russia to make sure somethings like this disasters to happen again. Everything could have been avoided if they were more careful and aware at least with less deaths.

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  12. Goes to show, the only thing russia has going is the fact that its super hard to take over and even giant disasters like this seems to hardly phase russia as a whole.

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  13. I think that the dam was made as safe as possible. For those people that helped to stop the oil and close the gates good job for helping. I also believe that the dam "blowing" up was really nobody's fault because there was no way that they could have saw this coming, things just happen. However as they said there was a fail safe and the turbines should have shut down but they kept going and pumping water which made the event even worse than it was.

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  14. in the us we are more worried about safety and the workers than other countries. i think Russia was going to make the turbine last as long as they could.

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  15. It is sad to see that so many died and suffered on account of an incident that could've been avoided. I do think it's irrational to assume that all hydropower dams are unsafe now though. If the right procedures are followed they can be very safe. I don't think we have to fear that dams in America are unsafe.

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  16. i think dams are kind of a bad idea considering the scale that it deals with, it just seems like too significant of a change to make when dealing with something as powerful as tons of water.

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  17. I think using hydropower is awesome because waters renewable and doesn't hurt the environment. however, when using dams i think we need to take extra precaution because of what can happen if the dam doesn't stay maintained properly. I don't think they should be classified as unsafe, but we just need to be extra careful.

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  18. In soviet Russia, you are the power of the country.

    And this is horrible, sad stuff. But that should be known with dams. The scale of them is enormous and one failure can lead to a chain reaction of disaster. Continuous checks are needed and this dam just wasn't what it should have been.

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  19. hydro power is a very large responsibility because if it fails it could kill thousands of people so you need to keep them maintained

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  20. building dams can be very dangerous for our eco system but still a very helpful tool for gaining electricity.
    Dams can kill many people from floods which is never good

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  21. The Russians that built that dam should've known something like that was going to happen. That's unfortunate those people died, it's a big responsibility dealing with that stuff and people don't realize how serious it is. Thank goodness nothing like that would happen here!

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  22. Water definitely has large amounts of power in certain situations. I feel the employees of this facility where responding to the problem well initially, but it soon went downhill after they activated it despite its problems. It just shows when dealing with machinery and forces of this size, you must pay attention to detail and keep things in check.

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  23. Dams rarely break down or fail, but when they do it isn't pretty. Like this one in Russia for example. Many people were killed and injured, and oil ended up being spilled everywhere. I don't think this would happen in the U.S. though because the Russians' waited until the last minute and never did anything about it and that's why it ended up failing. We would be a lot smarter than that.

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  24. This would never happen in the U.S because we would hvae put a new tubine in wayyy before it ever got close to being unsafe. The russians were just trying to stretch it as long as they could.

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  25. this is why proper maintenance is important to ensure safety. I feel like the US would probably overreact and make our dams overly safe to prevent something like this

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  26. this just goes to show you that improperly maintained equipment can lead to terrible disasters

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  27. sticky SAID,
    dams can be very unpredictable, they should have thought of all the negatives that can come from the huge dams. made it stronger and thicker.

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  28. WTF... OMG.... I dont know what to say except that the russians should ask us how to build better dams. OMG... stupid russians

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  29. I can't believe how big dams are, it's crazy and sad what can happen when dams malfunction.

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  30. Its crazy the destruction a dam can cause when it breaks. Its good that it usually never happens.

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  31. that sucks for them..

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  32. using hydro power is great because it does not hurt the environment but we need to be carful when building the dams

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  33. the 3 gorges dam is a good idea. moving all those people(1.4 million) is way worth it because you save millions more of people every other year, so it was a good decision to go through with it

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  34. i think the 3 three gorges dam is more beneficial than not. i believe its okay to sacrifice the displacement of 1.4 million for the good of tens of millions. so i don't think its really a bad idea. i agree with the 3 gorges.

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  35. Samantha Brandon-

    Three gorge dam is a good idea, but it sucks that it flooded out a whole city.

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  36. I find it kind of ironic how the Russins think of Americans as ignorant and spoiled, but they let this happen to there country. Next time don't wait untill the last minuter Russia. The U.S. couldn't affored to have something like this happen to them.

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  37. it's kind of sad to know that a lot of people were harmed when the whole situation could have been avoided. if they just would have took care of the dam the way they were suppose to, this never would have happened.

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  38. this never would have happened if russia was more stable, they relied on the other power plant too much instead of spreading out the load. they never would have had to use turbine 2.

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  39. Richie Dombrowski,

    they should of thought about a better design when they where making there hydro plant and carefully put it together because it shouldn't of failed if they did it right.

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  40. if they just took everything more serious like americans do this wouldnt of happend. its sad that people have to die because they didnt wanna take time off to make it safe

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