Huge dam spillways

Huge dam spillways:
I already discussed the biggest dam spillway in the world on this blog ( The spillway of the Robert Bourassa dam in canada ). These dam spillways are generally used to release the water from the water bassins behind a dam in case of a flood. These things are most of the time build in the construction of the dam itself like for example in the Itaipu dam in Paraguay which is one the biggest spillways ( 500 meters long and 350 meters wide) in the world in terms of water capacity. When water is released from this thing it makes a hell of a noise:



The biggest kind of spillways however can be found at earthfilled dams situated next to the dam instead in the structure of the dam itself. Like for example this huge spillway at the W.A.C Bennet dam in Canada:




It is 800 meters long and about 35 meters wide. Another huge one is this one at the Garrison Dam in North Dakota in the U.S. It is part of one of the world's largest earth filled dams which forms the Sakakawea Reservoir on the Missouri River. The spillway itself is 800 meters long and is almost 350 meters wide at the point where the water enters the spillway:



The most impressive and biggest concrete spillway in the world however is the spillway which is part of Fort Peck Lake dam in Montana in the U.S. The dam itself is the largest earth-filled dam in the world. The spillway is 1500 meters long and 150 meters wide:






Another earth filled dam ( which is also among the biggest earthfilled dams in the world) with impressive spillways is the Tarbela dam in Pakistan. This dam actually has 2 giant spillways. One of them has a lenght of 780 meters and a wide of 100 meters and the other one has a length of about 200 meters and a wide of 150 meters:





Another huge one is the spillway which is part of the Nagarjuna sagar dam in India. The spillway is build in the dam itself and is 500 meters wide:




And last but not least the giant dam spillway of the Ataturk dam in Turkey. This thing is 900 meters long and 150 meters wide:

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Niagara falls tailrace tunnels

The Niagara falls tailrace tunnels:
Almost everybody knows about the large Niagara water falls near the town of Niagara falls on the border of Canada and the United States. But I think fewer know that there are large underground tailrace tunnels in this area which are part of the hydro electric power stations located near the waterfalls. Two of these hydro electric power station which used these large tailrace tunnels are the William B. Rankin power station and the Toronto power company generating station. Both are now out of use and were explored by an urban explorer from Canada. He has his own site where the pictures seen below are from.

The William B. Rankin power station starts here collecting the water. The water then runs trough a 2200 feet long tailrace tunnel seen in the pictures below. The turbines used to generate the electricity can be seen at the top of the tunnel:




The whole tunnel was filled with water in the past but now the power station is out of use so you are able to walk in it. The tunnel ends at a very spectacular spot below the famous horsshoe waterfall:




The Toronto power generating station (seen in the picture below ) also uses these large underground tunnels. You can see this power station in the picture below. It is clearly visible that the power station haven't been used for a long time ( for 30 years):


The tunnels of this power station are located much deeper underground as those of the William B. rankin power station and this tailrace excists of multiple tunnels instead of 1 tunnel. The tunnels are located more then ten storeys underground and are completely made of brick and are a hundred years old. The tunnels are only accessible by descending through a narrow slit in its ceiling thirty feet above the floor. But when you get down there you certainly get to a spectacular site:






In the picture below you can see the end of a trailrace line of this power station. The water flow would have crashed downward through the openings in the floor into the penstocks that made good use on the water's gravitational potential energy, driving it down to the base of the gorge where it spun great turbines at the Ontario Generating Station:

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The steps of a giant

The steps of a giant:
The structure you can see in the pictures below is what they call the steps of a giant:









If you look at the pictures above that is a well chosen name if you believe in fairy tales. But in reality this is a man made spillway used to release water from the giant Robert-Bourassa dam in case of a flood. This giant Robert Bourassa dam can be seen at the right in the picture below ( the spillway is seen at the left side of the dam):


The spillway is almost 2 kilometers long and 150 meters wide and each step you see is 10 meters high. It is located in Quebec in Canada. Except during flood periods, water does not normally flow over this spillway. When there is a flood the gates, which can be seen at the top of the spillway in the picture below, can be opened and so the water can flow away very fast:


This way it protects other hydroelectric dams down the river and some towns along this river such as the small village of Radisson. The spillway and dam are part of the James Bay Project. This project refers to the construction of a series of hydroelectric power stations on the La Grande River in northwestern Québec, Canada. The project covers an area the size of the State of New York and is one of the largest hydroelectric systems in the world. The total project power plants has an installed generating capacity of 16,000 megawatts.

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Thunder Bay's grain terminals

Thunder bay's grain terminals:
Thunder Bay in Ontario Canada once held claim to the largest grain-handling port in the world. Today Thunder Bay still remains one of the world's largest grain-handling facilities . The port ships between 8 and 10 million tonnes annually, with the use of 9 giant terminal elevators capable of cleaning and storing 1.4 million tonnes of grain. These 9 giant terminals can be seen in the areal view below:

The city skyline is dominated by these 70 meters high structures like you can see in the picture below:


The biggest grain dock in the port and probably also in the world is the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool's Terminal 7 grain dock. Comprised of two separate buildings Terminal 7 has a capacity of 362,600 tonnes of grain:





You can see the huge size of this grain dock above( 550 m long, and almost 70 meters high ) , when you compare it to the freight ship. Further north, and south at this grain terminal 7, there are other big grain terminals. For example this one at the northern part of the city:

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Neutrino detectors

Neutrino detectors:

A neutrino detector is a device designed to detect neutrinos. Because neutrinos are very weakly interacting, neutrino detectors must be very large in order to detect a significant number of neutrinos. Neutrino detectors are often built underground in order to isolate the detector from cosmic rays and other background radiation. These Neutrino detectors look very futurustic for example the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) located in a mine in the wastelands around Sudbury, Canada. This thing was build 2000 meters below the ground and is the deepest Neutrino detector in the world. It uses 1000 tonnes of heavy water contained by a 12 meter diameter acrylic vessel. Neutrinos react with the heavy water (D2O) to produce flashes of light called Cherenkov radiation. This light is then detected by an array of 9600 photomultiplier tubes mounted in a geodesic support structure surrounding the heavy water vessel. The detector is immersed in light (normal) water within a 30 meter barrel-shaped cavity (the size of a 10 story building!) seen below:

Located in the deepest part of the mine, the overburden of rock shields the detector from cosmic rays. Another big one is the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector tank near the city of Hida in Japan. The observatory was designed to search for proton decay, study solar and atmospheric neutrinos, and keep watch for supernovas in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Super-K is located 1,000 m underground in Kamioka Mining and Smelting Co.'s Mozumi Mine in Hida's Kamioka area. It consists of a cylindrical stainless steel tank that is 41.4 m tall and 39.3 m in diameter holding 50,000 tons of ultra-pure water. These pictures below were taken within the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector tank, before it was filled completely with water and sealed:

Each of the 11,200 light detectors was hand assembled, and an expert glassblower shaped each of the glass bulbs. Using Super-Kamiokande, scientists for the first time were able to measure the mass of neutrinos. More photos of this detector can be seen here. Another one worth mentioning is the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) which takes place in the same underground laboratory (Kamioka Observatory) as the Super-K detector. You can see this detector in the picture below:

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Sudbury smelting operations

Sudbury smelting operations:
Sudbury is located in Canada and is considered as one of the most polluted cities on earth. The barren landscape, blackened rock faces, lack of vegetation and endless sea of dead tree stumps make this place seem like a different planet. The reason for the polluting industry around the city are the pentlandite, pyrite and pyrrhotite ores in the ground. They contain profitable amounts of many elements primarily nickel and copper, but also including smaller amounts of cobalt, platinum, gold, silver, selenium and tellurium. It also contains an unusually high concentration of sulfur. Local smelting of the ore releases this sulfur into the atmosphere where combines with water vapour to form sulfuric acid, contributing to acid rain. The effects of these smelters have been strikingly widespread: 40 square miles around Sudbury had been rendered completely barren of vegetation, 140 square miles around supported only shrub and herbaceous cover and vegetation had been in some way effected within a 1700 mile area. While building the "superstacks" of the smelters higher it has decreased the intensity of pollution in the immediate Sudbury area, much more of the surrounding region has now become effected:


One of the major polluting smelters is the Inco's Copper cliff processing facility. It is the largest nickel smelting operation in the world, with the second tallest chimney in the world (380m):






The area around this smelter is highly polluted. INCO also dumps it's waste molten slag after the processing of nickel in the surrounding area. It looks like a lava from a volcano. When the molten slag is being poured out of the ladles, the city skyline glows bright red and gives the impression of a volcano erupting:




Other smelters that contribute to the pollution around Sudbury are this smelter,and this one.

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Athabasca Oil Sands

Athabasca Oil Sands:
Oil sands, tar sands, or extra heavy oil is a type of bitumen deposit. The sands are naturally occurring mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen. They are found in large amounts in many countries throughout the world, but are found in extremely large quantities in Canada and Venezuela. Because extra-heavy oil and bitumen flow very slowly, if at all, toward producing wells under normal reservoir conditions, the sands must be extracted by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells by in situ techniques which reduce the viscosity by injecting steam, solvents, and/or hot air into the sands. These processes can use more water and require larger amounts of energy than conventional oil extraction.

At the present time, only Canada has a large-scale commercial oil sands industry, though a small amount of oil from oil sands is produced in Venezuela. The biggest oil sand operation in the world is taking place north of Fort McMarray in Alberta, Canada. These oil sands are called the Athabasca oil sands. There are three big mines in the Athabasca oil sand project which together form the biggest mining site in the world: The Syncrude mine serving the Syncrude oil refinery:









The Suncor mine, serving the Suncor oil refinery:





and the Albian sands, 15km north of the Syncrude mine.

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