00:01Deep in the Himalayas, engineers are building a hydropower system that will generate more electricity than any other in the
00:08world.
00:08They keep most details about the construction secret, but we do know the project is worth $168 billion and has
00:17already become one of the most ambitious and controversial projects in China.
00:23At a place called the Great Bend, one of the most violent rivers on Earth makes a sudden U-turn
00:29around a mountain massive.
00:31Then, it plunges downward with insane force.
00:34Nature already built the drop and engineers just want to exploit it.
00:39Instead of stopping the river, they plan to use this massive altitude drop as leverage.
00:44They will catch the water before it escapes and force it through tens of miles of tunnels bored straight into
00:50the rock.
00:51This project isn't one structure.
00:53It's a network of underground power stations buried so deep that satellites won't see most of it.
00:59Water will rush through rock tunnels at terrifying speed, slam into turbines hidden inside caverns, and then re-emerge downstream
01:08like nothing happened.
01:10The mountain becomes the machine.
01:12Engineers aren't just building infrastructure, they're rewiring geography.
01:18All this should generate up to 300 billion kilowatt hours every year.
01:23That's more than the world's largest existing hydropower system.
01:27Enough to reshape regional power grids, slash fossil fuel dependence, and shift global energy influence.
01:34This single project could outproduce entire countries.
01:38On paper, it looks like the clean energy jackpot, but in reality, it's a bet against physics, geology, and time.
01:47The Himalayas are not stable.
01:49They're still rising.
01:50Earthquakes happen constantly because two massive tectonic plates are grinding into each other.
01:56Tunnels don't just fracture here, they twist and squeeze and deform.
02:01Landslides can erase roads overnight.
02:04Rock pressure shifts unpredictably.
02:06When water flows through underground tunnels under extreme pressure, even a tiny fissure can turn into a catastrophic internal explosion.
02:15And unlike with surface dams, you can't see the failure forming.
02:23The project will need thousands of engineers because nothing about this is routine.
02:28Every tunnel must be mapped in three dimensions, accounting for stress, fault lines, and rock types that behave differently under
02:36pressure.
02:38Engineers model what happens if a tunnel collapses mid-flow.
02:41They figure out what happens if seismic waves hit during peak water load.
02:45They plan what to do if sediment clogs a turbine deep underground where humans can't reach it quickly.
02:52And then, there's the ecosystem problem.
02:54This region remains one of the least studied on Earth.
02:58Seasonal water flows are crucial for plant life, fish migration, soil stability, and downstream agriculture across borders.
03:06Even small changes in timing or volume can ripple outward.
03:10Because so much of the system stays underground, real-time monitoring becomes harder than with visible dams.
03:16You won't get dramatic warning signs, such as an overflowing reservoir or fissures in a concrete wall.
03:22Just invisible pressure building below your feet.
03:27Engineers know this, which is why they focus on redundancy, pressure release systems, and emergency bypass tunnels to make their
03:34project as safe as possible.
03:36But one mistake, and the consequences will be quite scary.
03:42This also isn't just about one country.
03:45Rivers don't respect state borders.
03:48What happens upstream affects millions downstream.
03:51Water captured at the Great Bend won't disappear, but its timing, temperature, and sediment load will change.
03:59That matters for ecosystems and communities far away that never agree to the experiment.
04:05And yet, if it works, it changes everything.
04:08The success of this project would prove that future energy doesn't need sprawling surface destruction.
04:14Mountains themselves could become power plants, and gravity could be fuel.
04:19The Earth's own topography turns into infrastructure.
04:23That idea alone will influence mega-projects for decades.
04:27In South America, Central Asia, anywhere rivers fall hard enough to work for humans.
04:33If the system holds, it will stand as one of the greatest engineering achievements in history.
04:38If it fails, the river won't negotiate.
04:41It will reclaim every tunnel, chamber, and machine we carved into its path.
04:48The current world champion in size among hydroelectric dams is a Chinese mega-project too.
04:54The Three Gorges Dam, with a capacity of 22.5 gigawatts, sits across the Yangtze River that stretches thousands of
05:01miles from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea.
05:04For centuries, the Yangtze was powerful, unpredictable, and dangerous.
05:10Flooding cities, carving deep canyons, and shaping civilizations.
05:14By the late 20th century, China decided to take control of floods, water, and energy here.
05:20Construction began in the 1990s, but this was never going to be a quick job.
05:25We're talking about a structure that would hold back a reservoir stretching over 400 miles and covering ancient towns, farmland,
05:33and ecosystems.
05:34It took millions of cubic meters of material, tens of thousands of workers, and coordination that made the pyramids look
05:41like day labor.
05:42The engineering challenges were insane.
05:46The dam had to withstand not just the water behind it, but earthquakes, seasonal torrents, and the huge pressure of
05:52gravity pushing against it every second of every day.
05:56Engineers had to innovate on the go.
05:59Reroute entire sections of the river.
06:01Sink foundations deeper than most size scrapers are tall.
06:05And designed turbines that could convert the river's raw power into electricity without tearing themselves apart.
06:14When the dam was complete, the world finally saw what all the effort added up to.
06:19The Three Gorges Dam now produces more power than any other hydroelectric facility on Earth.
06:25It's gigawatts of electricity that lights up cities, fuel factories, and replace fossil fuels on a massive scale.
06:33During peak output, the dam can generate more electricity than dozens of nuclear plants working together.
06:39It's clean energy on a scale humanity has never seen before, and that alone would make the project historic.
06:46And the impact isn't only about energy.
06:50The dam changed water levels for hundreds of miles.
06:53The reservoir created behind it acts like a giant battery that stores enormous amounts of water that can be released
07:00in controlled ways.
07:01This transformed flood control on the Yangtze River.
07:05Entire cities that used to live in fear of seasonal floods now have a shield of water stored safely behind
07:11a wall of steel and concrete.
07:13For millions of people, that's literally life-saving infrastructure.
07:18Of course, nothing this huge comes without cost.
07:21The Three Gorges Dam forced the relocation of over a million people.
07:26Towns, villages, and entire cultural landscapes ended up underwater as the reservoir filled.
07:32Archaeologists raced to record ancient sites.
07:35Families had to start new lives elsewhere.
07:37In a way, this dam didn't just control a river, but rewrote human lives.
07:44The natural world paid a price, too.
07:47River ecosystems shifted, fish migrations changed, and wetlands flooded.
07:51Species that depended on the old rhythm of the Yangtze found themselves in new and often harsher conditions.
07:58But probably the most surprising effect of the Three Gorges Dam is on the Earth itself.
08:04The weight of the reservoir's water is so enormous that it's actually slightly nudged our planet's crust.
08:12Geologists measuring shifts in the region's crust have detected movement that, although it's tiny, reflects forces at a scale most
08:20people never think about.
08:21A dam changed the ground beneath it.
08:26Today, the Three Gorges Dam continues to operate as the symbol of 21st century engineering.
08:32Ships pass through its locks, and electricity flows across regions that once relied on coal.
08:38Scientists study sediment buildup in the reservoir, climate impacts on the river, and how the dam interacts with Earth's crust.
08:47It's a laboratory as much as it is infrastructure, a place where humans test their understanding of nature on a
08:53massive scale.
08:55So, there's no simple way to summarize the Three Gorges Dam, because it isn't simple.
09:00This megaproject proved that humanity can bend a river and power a nation, and in many ways, it worked.
09:07But it also showed that when engineering reaches planetary scale, the risks grow just as fast as the rewards.
09:14The new Himalayan Megadam isn't just a sequel.
09:17It's a test of whether we learned enough from the first time we tried to reshape the Earth itself.
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