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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| Troops sent to protect China dam | |
| 2004-09-14 | |
| China is reported to have sent heavily armed troops to protect its huge Three Gorges Dam against terrorist attack. Military helicopters, patrol boats, armoured vehicles and bomb disposal robots have been deployed around the dam, the China Times said on Tuesday. The newspaper made no mention of who might want to target the project. But a US suggestion in June that Taiwan might target the dam to deter a Chinese invasion provoked an angry response from Beijing. Chinese military officials said at the time that any attack on the dam would provoke a devastating response. China regards Taiwan as part of its territory, and has repeatedly threatened to invade if the island declares independence. According to the China Times report, military police have been training a "pool of talented anti-terrorist professionals" to work at the dam and its massive hydroelectric project. "The important anti-terrorism measures taken by the military police on the main bridges, dams and hydro-electric stations have basically been completed," the newspaper said. China has huge hopes for the Three Gorges, the world's largest dam and flood control project, which Beijing hopes will help solve China's energy problems when it is completed in 2009. But the 180bn Yuan ($22bn) project is also proving controversial, with some environmentalists doubting its ability to prevent flooding - a claim which again resurfaced during recent floods earlier this month, when the authorities were forced to close the dam to shipping. This is not the first time the project has been singled out as a possible terrorist target. In its annual statement to the US Congress, released in May, the Pentagon said that Taiwanese "proponents of strikes against the mainland apparently hope that merely presenting credible threats to China's urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, will deter Chinese military coercion." In an angrily worded response, senior Chinese General Liu Yuan was quoted as saying that China would be "seriously on guard against threats from Taiwan independence
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| Posted by:Anonymous5089 |
| #15 Funny, Fly. Well done. |
| Posted by: Mister Write 2004-09-14 11:14:44 PM |
| #14 Fly Ash Liberation Army, that must be Shipman. Where do you come up with this stuff. Only an infintessimally small precentage of the world population has sucked fly ash into their lungs. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-09-14 11:09:54 PM |
| #13 I am no expert on dam busting, especially on such a large gravity dam such as Three Gorges. It would seem to me that one would need the power of a nuclear weapon on the water side of the dam, like mudcapping a boulder. How to get the nuke there would be problematical, except for a missile delivery. Troops on the dam site are useless except for a show of force or for protecting against sabatoge. Destruction of the turbines and alternators in the powerhouse would be a serious blow. You just do not rebuild huge units like these in a week or two. They are basically built in place. It is amusing, though to see the Chicoms with their knickers in a knot. Fly Ash Liberation Army----great handle, heh heh. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul in McGrath, AK 2004-09-14 11:03:41 PM |
| #12 We have your dam, if you want your turbines to survive please to leave 12,000 tons of rebar in a brown paper bag by the north floodgate. |
| Posted by: Fly Ash Liberation Army 2004-09-14 6:11:07 PM |
| #11 NEWS FLASH: A "friend" advised me that Norks may be interested in a little "hydroelectic dam" payback to the Chinese. (Implying that it was the Chin that blew the whatever in Norkland to smithereens.) |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-09-14 5:54:39 PM |
| #10 Possibly the greatest dam breaks in history, in Montana. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-09-14 5:20:18 PM |
| #9 Several bits: the easiest way would be to put a small submersible (think torpedo) in the water upstream, that would use mostly current to get into position, guiding itself to the wall of the dam *or* to a spillway. That would be if the Taiwanese hadn't already pre-positioned explosive charges inside the dam, during construction, designed to sit there for years. I might note that the achilles heel of Three Gorges is the poor rock on which it is set. It could go spontaneously at any time. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-09-14 5:15:22 PM |
| #8 A few words on the effect of destroying German dams from the Nation Master database: The Moehne and Eder lakes poured around 330 million tons of water into the western Ruhr region. Mines were flooded and houses, factories, roads, railways and bridges destroyed as the flood waters spread for around 50 miles (80 km) from the source. In terms of deaths: 1,294 people were killed, 749 of them Ukrainian POWs from a camp just below the Eder Dam. Of course, the Yangtze is known for killing thousands of people at a time, whenever it floods. The Three Gorges Dam will have a much bigger impact because of how big it is. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-09-14 5:06:00 PM |
| #7 The key to taking out a dam is placing the explosion against the dam on the water side. The water helps to focus and magnify the effect compared to a explosion on the air exposed face. Technology to deliver a bomb to the water side of a dam was developed in WW2 to take out dams in Nazi controlled Europe by the Allies. Check out "bouncing bomb" on google. The only difference is how much more explosive yield is needed for the three gorges dam compared to the dams on the ruhr river. |
| Posted by: Chemist 2004-09-14 4:54:42 PM |
| #6 That raspy sort of squeaking sound you hear in the background is China's collective military sphincter puckering up at the realization that their same sort of belligerent swaggering attitude can be turned against them in spades. There should be an international pact to blow the Three Gorges to atoms if the communist Chinese so much as fart in Taiwan's general direction. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-09-14 4:12:24 PM |
| #5 My first thought was how do they expect the troops to stop the water. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-09-14 4:11:37 PM |
| #4 Perhaps there's a connection between this and last week's mysterious explosion in North Korea? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-09-14 3:59:53 PM |
| #3 A real bold statement, "The Three Gorges Dam will not collapse and cannot be destroyed," They said that about the Titanic too. Like the man said "Never say never again" . |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-09-14 3:57:25 PM |
| #2 Figure almost all our memory chips, and such are made in Taiwanese factories, they'd have no trouble stealthily deveoping highly accurate missles. As for warheads, if terrorists can try for suitcase nukes from the former USSR, imagine what the wealth of an economically strong nation like Taiwan can do on the market. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-09-14 3:56:26 PM |
| #1 My first thought was Xinjiang Muslims might target the damn dam, but that Taiwan connection is just juicy. If Taiwan faces invasion they can do incredible damage to the PRC by blowing the damn dam. So what would it take to blow a damn damn with some settling cracks and a full load of water behind it. Could a non-nuclear load carried by a fighter bomber do it? Could a cruise missile? Does Tiawan have cruise missiles with the range? |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2004-09-14 3:46:47 PM |