Back in 1942 the Grand Coulee Dam showed how dams could deal with the abrasive power of floodwater. However, to build a dam across the mighty Yenisey River in Russia, engineers had to find a way to stop the water while keeping the ships moving.

In the 1960s the Soviet Union wanted to upscale its industrial power, so they planned a series of gigantic dams. One of the first, the Krasnoyarsk Dam in Siberia, would stretch a whole kilometre across the river Yenisey and generate 6,000 megawatts of power. But this river was also the main shipping route into Siberia and would get blocked by the hydroelectric dam.

To keep the ships moving engineers hatched an ingenious plan. They decided to build a steel trough big enough to carry a ship. They then planned to push trough and ship up to the top of the dam, where they would spin the whole contraption round and lower it back down to the river on the other side. To move the 7,000 tonne load they would use hydraulic pumps.

The Russian engineers used liquid under pressure to lift their ships. In the walls of the chamber were powerful pumps which squeezed hydraulic fluid under immense pressure into a set of motors mounted below. These drove huge steel cogs that propelled the trough along a guiderail. The motors generated so much traction that they lifted the chamber from river to reservoir in just 90 minutes.

When the ship lift opened the citizens of Krasnoyarsk turned out in droves – this mechanical marvel was the crowning glory of the biggest dam in the world.

At China’s Three Gorges Dam the engineers faced a major traffic problem, their dam sits on one of the busiest rivers in Asia. Shifting 100s of ships a day over a dam that’s more than 100 metres high is a tall order for engineers. Befitting the biggest dam on Earth, the Chinese solved it by building the biggest ship lock on Earth.

Watch the complete documentary here –    • Mega Dams – Hydroelectric Evolution –...  

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