The story appears on

Page A7

April 9, 2013

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Nation

Dam project safe from quakes

A PROJECT to raise the height of a dam in central China's Hubei Province is unlikely to trigger destructive earthquakes, a researcher said yesterday.

Greater water storage capacity, a larger permeable area and deeper impact may induce some minor quakes, but destructive earthquakes with magnitudes over 4.7 are highly unlikely, said Wang Qiuliang, an associate researcher with the provincial earthquake bureau.

Wang said the dam was built upon favorable geological conditions with no active fault traversing through the site, and the strongest earthquake induced by the dam occurred in 1973, with a magnitude of 4.7.

To monitor seismic activity near the dam, the province started building a dam-inducted earthquake monitoring system last year, which will be put into operation in July, he said.

Construction of the Danjiangkou Dam, located in the city of Danjiangkou, started in 1958. It was completed in 1973 with a water storage level of 157 meters.

The project to raise the height of the dam started in 2005 as part of China's south-to-north water diversion project, the largest project of its kind of the world. The project, expected to be completed this year, will enable the dam to raise its maximum water level from 157 meters to 170 meters.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend