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Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

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Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Loki » Sat 01 Mar 2014, 15:28:28

The Northwest is already seeing a low snowpack, which will reduce hydroelectric generation, now the Wanapum Dam has a big crack in it. The lowering of the reservoir will reduce generation at the dam, possibly eliminate it. This will also affect the rest of the hydrosystem since it's operated as a unit.

There's little danger of flooding as this is a run-of-the-river dam with minimal storage capacity.

A 65-foot-long crack in a Columbia River dam in central Washington has prompted officials to begin lowering the water level by 20 feet so inspectors can get a better idea of how serious the damage is.

There's no immediate threat to public safety from the crack in the Wanapum Dam, Grant County Public Utility District spokesman Thomas Stredwick said Friday. The dam is located just downstream from where Interstate 90 crosses the river....

The dam can generate more than 1,000 megawatts of hydroelectric power.

PUD officials are working with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to determine how best to repair the cracked pillar.

Repairs could also affect the rest of the Columbia River hydroelectric system.

'All these dams coordinate to generate energy on a regional scope,' Stredwick said. 'If Wanapum is impacted, that has impacts on dams upstream as well as below.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2ujzGQrX0


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Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby dolanbaker » Sat 01 Mar 2014, 17:29:37

Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

WOW, that's going to take some smokin' [smilie=new_rainbow.gif]
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby eastbay » Sat 01 Mar 2014, 20:44:09

This isn't the only major PNW hydroelectric dam aging not-too-gracefully.

Not reported in the media is the dilapidated condition of the Columbia River's Bonneville Dam spillway. The 77-year-old structure is now past it's expected 75 year lifespan and creeping up to the edge of a catastrophic failure.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Loki » Sat 01 Mar 2014, 21:11:35

eastbay wrote:This isn't the only major PNW hydroelectric dam aging not-too-gracefully.

Not reported in the media is the dilapidated condition of the Columbia River's Bonneville Dam spillway. The 77-year-old structure is now past it's expected 75 year lifespan and creeping up to the edge of a catastrophic failure.

I wrote my master's thesis on the Columbia River hydrosystem. On a whim while I was doing research at the Corps of Engineers' library I requested information on the projected lifespan and decommissioning plans for Bonneville. I never heard back. :wink:

I read a mountain of primary literature on Columbia River dams, I don't recall ever coming across any mention of lifespan or decommissioning costs. They simply weren't accounted for at the time (1930s-70s). Hopefully the dam owners are thinking about them now.

Bonneville is the oldest of the big federal dams on the Columbia, construction on it started 80 years ago this year. Can it last another 20 years? Maybe. Another 50? Seems improbable.

Do you have any links on the spillway problem? I haven't heard about this.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby rollin » Sat 01 Mar 2014, 21:54:00

One of the big blind spots in developed countries is the lack of viable plans for the future when proceeding with large projects. All plans seem to assume that growth would continue and the country would be richer than ever, thus able to easily replace and improve structures once they reach end of usable life. No plans were considered where the best that could be done was to maintain and stretch the usable life of large structures and general replacement was often not a viable option due to lack of funding.

in other words, nobody thought that creating all the giant highways, buildings, dams, pipelines, waterways and other big structures would economically hogtie future generations just trying replace and maintain these structures.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby eastbay » Sun 02 Mar 2014, 00:03:24

Not yet reported in the media and no links that I'm aware of, Loki, but there will be, in time. I will check occasionally. Powerhouse 2, built in the 80s, will remain standing much longer than the crumbling, 3/4-century-old Powerhouse 1 and spillway.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby BobInget » Sun 02 Mar 2014, 13:05:27

Im the same age as many PNW -- WPA and Tennessee Valley dam projects. I can tell you with
some certainty my cracks are getting larger every year. Life expectance for males born in 1935 was
59.9--- (2010: 76.5) if that's any indication of how long a dam will hold its water. Like those big dams, I get inspected only once a year. Betcha when my major crack fails, it comes all at once .

Less water/snowpack means more natural gas/coal will be consumed. We won't cut back on consumption.

Several times the Obama Administration proposed infrastructure rebuilding programs. Alas, Obama is no Roosevelt or even a Johnson. Republicans of depression era were just as vicious and stubborn as today but Roosevelt was a rich, 100% white guy and attack from the Right fell flat even in the 'solid south'.

How much more proof do we need? After 78 years these "New Deal' projects paid off.... big time.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 02 Mar 2014, 20:40:44

Heard it reported on NPR this afternoon. No analysis, just down stream towns have been alerted.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby rollin » Mon 03 Mar 2014, 15:44:29

Bobinget has it right about the projects payback time. Was a good investment at the time. Now the government is so dysfunctional big projects may never be built again let alone repaired.
Of course his personal cracks are of great concern to society, congress should fund their repair. Don't hold your breath Bob.

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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 03 Mar 2014, 16:08:57

Highway lights, parking lots, bill boards, office buildings, architectural accents....the list goes on and on.....

It is a measure of our collective concern about cc.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Tue 04 Mar 2014, 00:19:00

BobInget wrote: Life expectance for males born in 1935 was
59.9--- (2010: 76.5) if that's any indication of how long a dam will hold its water. Like those big dams, I get inspected only once a year. Betcha when my major crack fails, it comes all at once .
I'm still holding my water, though I'm not quite that old.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Tue 04 Mar 2014, 16:47:52

And many of these dams are silted up with hundreds of millions of tons of sediment that nobody would be willing to dredge out and put......where? And how would one transport a whole river valley of sludge anyway?
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Tue 04 Mar 2014, 18:34:16

PrestonSturges wrote:And many of these dams are silted up with hundreds of millions of tons of sediment that nobody would be willing to dredge out and put......where? And how would one transport a whole river valley of sludge anyway?
And the silt is more dense than the water the dam was designed to hold.

I ran across a paper about a large new dam in China that the builders think will take a century to silt up, but the writer thinks it could be as little as 30 years. Also found some other interesting stuff about sedimentation.

I was thinking of doing a thread on the theme: is hydroelectric really a renewable resource, since reservoirs have a finite lifetime due to sedimentation? I already have a catchy title: "Silt Happens - that Dam Thread".
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby yellowcanoe » Tue 04 Mar 2014, 19:31:57

Keith_McClary wrote:
I was thinking of doing a thread on the theme: is hydroelectric really a renewable resource, since reservoirs have a finite lifetime due to sedimentation? I already have a catchy title: "Silt Happens - that Dam Thread".


There is quite a variation in the lifespan of reservoirs due to sedimentation. For example, rivers flowing in the Canadian Shield tend to have very low sediment loads so reservoirs in that region are not going to silt up anytime soon.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby rollin » Tue 04 Mar 2014, 22:49:44

I guess they just knock down the dam, wait a few years and rebuild it. Nature moves the silt, the fish don't like it but silt happens.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Loki » Wed 05 Mar 2014, 02:12:23

Local radio reported the crack was 2" wide, but has shrunk since they dropped the reservoir. Said it was affecting one spillway pier, but they think the rest of the structure would hold if that went out, limiting downstream flows if a catastrophic failure occurred.

While a catastrophic breach and flood is unlikely, it's worth noting the nation's largest nuclear waste site happens to be 25 miles downstream.

The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[8] Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[9][10] and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.[2] While most of the current activity at the site is related to the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_nu ... eservation
Last edited by Loki on Wed 05 Mar 2014, 02:23:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Wed 05 Mar 2014, 02:20:51

Loki wrote:While a catastrophic breach and flood is unlikely, it's worth noting the nation's largest nuclear waste site happens to be 25 miles downstream.

The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[8] Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[9][10] and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.[2] While most of the current activity at the site is related to the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station....

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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby Loki » Wed 05 Mar 2014, 02:34:56

Apparently the Department of Energy (the agency that manages the Hanford site) has considered a catastrophic dam breach. Basically the nuclear waste would get spread around in the flood waters and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

“It’s always tough to say with certainly that a facility is 100 percent prepared for an unknown disaster,” says Geoff Tyree of the Department of Energy. He says the DOE has looked at the possibility of the worst-case scenario where the Grand Coulee Dam partially fails on the Columbia River. He says that flooding could result in the release of radioactive material from portions of Hanford into the water, but he says that same water would dilute the radiation to a very low level off site, and Hanford would have about 40 hours of warning to prepare.

http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20131127/le ... ear-option
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Re: Sixty-five-foot CRACK is discovered in Washington dam

Unread postby HARM » Thu 06 Mar 2014, 02:50:30

in other words, nobody thought that creating all the giant highways, buildings, dams, pipelines, waterways and other big structures would economically hogtie future generations just trying replace and maintain these structures.


Alternatively, it's possible to view infrastructure upgrade/replacement projects --especially ones for relatively clean sources such as hydro-- as win-win scenarios that: (a) provide renewable power and (b) good-paying jobs that millions of Americans --especially those under 30-- desperately need. Imagine if we had spent just a quarter of the ~$10 Trillion wasted on financial sector bailouts on infrastructure renewal projects and alternative power R&D. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009 ... .html?_r=0

We can and should put people to work repairing and replacing most of our Depression-era infrastructure. But... doing the sensible thing that benefits the greatest number of citizens is no longer part of our national consciousness. All Americans can agree on these days is that money is "free speech", rich people deserve more tax cuts, poor people deserve more benefit cuts, scientists cannot be trusted with science, women can't be trusted with their own bodies, and we can all become rich by borrowing and speculating our way to prosperity. *Sigh*...
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