A GIANT DAM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24699, 30 August 1941, Page 9

A GIANT DAM

MAJOR DEVELOPMENT CENTRE OF METAL AREA GREAT POWER SCHEME

• Major Russian electrical developments number 75, in eastern European Russia, in and near the Urals, and in Siberia. But Dnieprostrov 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. 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 tor part of the year by larger craft. As far back as the reign of Catherine the Great the damming of the' Dnieper and the construction of 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 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, "j 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. • . 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 cusees (about the normal flow of the Waikato), to the stupendous spring flood volume of over 800,000 cusees. Spring thaws in the great river basin of 170,000 square miles bring ice as well as flood. i 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 shiftsi The work was completed on May Day, 1982. : '.;" v ' • Dam Half a Mile Long The dam was 2500 feet long and was 140 feet: to the crest; the river was lifted 120 feet and a vast lake extended upriver. The earlier 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 ,th'e 47 spillway gates; the upper piers, and roadway, and the power house, below the western end of the r dam; could be ruined in a. succession of blasts is feasible.

The immense power; house, 760 feet long. 70 feet wide and 60 feet high in the generator room, contained 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 every 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 .£ 1,000,000 ,to assemble.

Even so, Dnieprostrov was riot planned to supply all the power that the new industrial area or 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 trie dain construction began the building of the huge industrial undertaking about it: metallurgical coke ovens to produce 80,000 tons a year, chemical, works jtq extract by-products, blast and electric furnaces, rolling mills, etc., to produce 2.000,000 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 Sea 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 accomiriodate the 25,000 workers who built the dam and power house, the furnaces and mills, and;for the industrial workers who followed them;