DNIEPROSTROY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 51, 28 August 1941, Page 8

DNIEPROSTROY

POWER COLOSSUS

ONE OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST

GREAT METAL CENTRE

The report, issued from Stockholm and published here on Friday, that the Russians had destroyed the great power dam of Dnieprostroy has not been referred to in subsequent news except for a statement, published on Tuesday, that "Berlin radio confirms that the Russians have blown up the Dnieprostroy power-station." Blowing up the power-station is not the same thing I as blowing up the dam. The geni crating station can be easily wrecked, but a great dam cannot. It has now been reported that the Germans have captured Dnepropetrovsk, which is about 40 miles north of the power station. The earlier report spoke of the damage which the water released from the dam would do in the lower reaches of the river, and there has been no reference to any such effects. It is difficult to see why the Russians should destroy a useful power supply .until such a step became imperative, and in the circumstances it may be doubted whether in fact Dnieprostroy has yet gone out of action. It is curious, too, that the German air force has not been reported as haying attacked it. Major Russian electrical developments number 75, in eastern European Russia, in and near the Urals, and in Siberia. But Dnieprostroy was the giant, with nine turbo-generators producing 756,000 h.p., as compared with the 600,000 of the great Boulder Dam development in America. A RUSSIAN TRADITION. The damming of the Dnieper is a part of Russian tradition. For about 200 miles from the Black Sea the river is navigable; then, over about 180 miles, where the river runs over granite and rock, there are lengths of rapid, with a total fall of about; 120 feet; above these the river is navigable by light craft and for part of the year by larger craft As far back as the reign of Catherine the Great the damming of the Dnieper, a canal and locks past the rapids, were discussed and planned, but the task was far beyond engineering capacity of the eighteenth century. , ' Before % the last World War British engineers and financiers looked to the Dnieper and an American * engineer, Colonel Hugh L. Cooper, was asked by them to examine and report. The war and the revolution ended that possibility, and British interests dropped out. In 1926 the Soviet Government returned to the dream of a navigable j way from the Black Sea to the Baltic and the power that could be available. Colonel Cooper was asked by the Soviet Government to report, and, a! year later, to direct the work. ENGINEERING'PROBLEMS. There were extraordinary engineering problems and there were conflicts of expert opinion so sharp as to be irreconcilable except by the heroic ] method adopted, of employing two entirely different systems of dam construction, one on either bank; after a year the American system was adopted, and the recommendations of the commission of- European engineers and advisers were dropped. j River problems were great—to the minds of. many leading world engineers insuperable. In the year the Dnieper ranges from very low to extreme flood, from 6000 cusecs (about the normal flow of the Waikato) to the stupendous spring flood volume of over 800,000 cusecs. Spring thaws in the great river basin of 170,000 square I miles bring ice as well as flood. Construction was commenced in November, 1927. Man and woman power rose to a peak of 25,000. Women filled such roles as instrument workers and surveyors, machine operators, locomotive drivers. Men and women worked round the clock in shifts. The work was completed on May Day, 1932. DAM HALF A MILE LONG. The dam is 2500 feet long and is 140 feet to the crest; the river is lifted 120 feet and a vast lake extends upriver. The account of the destruction of the dam talked of its having been blown up and completely destroyed; but it seems not credible that so vast a concrete mass could have been wiped from the rock gorge in which it was built, for at its base the dam was 60 feet thick, and solid. That the 47 spillway gates, the upper piers, ,and roadway, and the, power house, below the western end of the dam, could be ruined in a succession of blasts is feasible. The immense power house, 760 feet long, 70 feet vyide, and 60 feet high in the generator room, contains turbogenerators. The turbines were of American manufacture; each produced 84,000 h.p. ' Five of the alternators were built in America, and the rest in Leningrad. They were, in 1932, the largest generators in physical size ever built, and possibly have not since been eclipsed, at any rate in Western countries and the Americas. The construction plant, locomotive traction, and ways cost the best part of a million pounds to assemble. Even so, Dnieprostroy was not planned to supply all the power that the new industrial area of Southern Ukraine would require when developed to the full, and transmission lines linked the Dnieper hydro system with the steam stations of the Don basin. INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. Coincident with the dam construction began the building of the huge industrial undertaking about it: metallurgical coke, ovens to .produce 80,000 tons a year, chemical works to extract by-products, blast and electric furnaces, rolling mills, etc., to produce two million tons of iron and steel a year; ferro-alloy works: aluminium works designed to produce up to 20,000 tons a year; fire-brick and cement-slag works. A canal with three locks was constructed round the dam towards the fulfilment of the national tradition of a navigable way from the Black to the Baltic Sea; irrigation channels were' laid from the artificial lake far into the surrounding country. The town of Zaporozhe was built from the bare ground into a modern city, first to accommodate the 25.000 workers' who built the dam and power house, the furnaces and mills, and for the industrial workers who followed them. The total cost of founding the undertaking was about £85,000,000.