Wonder Power Plant Will Rival Niagara

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7412, 20 December 1930, Page 22

Wonder Power Plant Will Rival Niagara

NEW hydro-electricity plant on the Dnieper River, which will be completed in 1932, will cost approximately £100,000,000.

It will employ 30,000 men, who will produce a million tons of cast iron annually. And another Russian hydro-electric scheme for which plans are being prepared will be, it is stated, 10 times as big! writes Louis Fischer in the "Daily Herald.” Dnieperstroi will be the second largest hydro-electric power plant in the world when it is completed in May, 1932. The dam is being built where the Dnieper River is a third of a mile wide and will raise the level of the water 100 feet. It is nearly 200 feet high and more than 100 feet thick at the base. But figures give only a partial impression ipf the immensity of the work. The electrical station at the dam Will produce two and a-half billion kilowatt hours of energy. Nine turbines, each of 90,000 horse-power, are arriving from the United States. Each eosts £50,000. Each of the nine generators, also of United States make, costa £90,000. When completed the dam will represent a total outlay of over £20,000,000, and a huge metallurgical plant la to cost £80,000,000. The total outlay in Dnieperstroi will be a billon roubles.

Erasing Villages.

But only the eye can tell the entire jtfory. At present the Dnieper is navigable from Kiev down to Dnieperpetrovsk (Yekaterinoslav), a distance of 450 miles, and from Zaporozhie to its jnonth at Kherson, a distance of 180 fniles. But for 45 miles between Dnieperpetrovsk and Zaporozhie there are many wild rapids, which prevent the passage of ships. The new dam will cover these with water, so that navigation may be carried out from the Black Sea far up to the ancient city af Kiev. The rise of the river will inundate

RUSSIA PLANS £100,000,000 WORK

50,000 acres of land. Many villages and bridges will be erased, and villages are now being moved bodily to unaffected areas.

All this happens above the dam. Below, no changes occur. The metallurgical plant is, of course, the reason for the construction of the dam. Together, the new plants will employ 30,000 men when working at full speed. They will produce 1,000,000 tons of cast iron, 10,000 tons of special steels, and 15,000 tons of aluminium, nitrate fertiliser and ferrous alloys. But excess current will remain even after the construction of this plant. That surplus will be carried by a 150,000,volt transmission line, to Dnieperpetrovsk factories 80 miles away, to the Donetz coal basin and the Krivoi Rog metal foundries. The . plans for Dnieperstroi were drafted by one of Europe’s best electrical engineers—the Russian Professor I. G. Alexandrov. Winter, a Russian, directs the work. And the chief consultant is Colonel Hugh L. Cooper, an American of many years’ experience, who spends one month out of six at Dnieperstroi. As we climbed up and down the huge trestles, watched the workers mounting the largest turbines in the world, or looked down into the dry bed of the river, we were amazed. Our young Soviet engineer guide smiled: “We are already working on the plans for Angara-stroi,” he said. “It will yield 10 times as much horsepower as Dnieperstroi and will be 10 times as big!” Mammoth Lake. 1 Angara, the Soviet Niagara, is a river that flows out of Lake Baikal in Siberia. All rivers feed into the mammoth lake. Angara is the only stream that leaves it. Its water resources, therefore, are endless, and there is a natural fall. The dam that is planned will, according to authorities, produce nine million horse-power of electrical energy. Our Soviet engineer likewise spoke of Volga-stroi, for which Mr Davis, an American consulting specialist, has already been retained. It will be twice as powerful as Dnieperstroi.