Three gorges dam

By now it has become rather obvious that the Three Gorges Dam itself is unstable and subject to potential collapse.  Each year it is been loaded by the summer floods and pressurized.  This means that the cross section of the dam is rotating to hold the increasing pressure.

All this movement, even in inches, produces fracturing which weakens the whole cross section.  All this comes about because the foundation must be much weaker than safe.  Since this is larger than past builds, it is likely that bearing needs  of those foundations must be built exponentially stronger.  It may not have been possible and engineer shopping would  have produced a compliant design.

So a collapse is possible followed by an inability to relieve the dam and overtopping as  the ultimate failure mode.  This reports tells us the results.


This is potentially hte worse disaster in human history.