Friday Night Photos Damn Big Dam Edition
Happy Friday everyone. Welcome to Friday Night Photos your once a week escape from the day to day insanity of the world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music or whatever else you find of interest that helps tune out the madness.
My sister had never been to Hoover Dam, so while we were in Las Vegas we toured the dam.
A little info about the dam courtesy Britannica.com
Hoover Dam, dam in Black Canyon on the Colorado River, at the Arizona-Nevada border, U.S. Constructed between 1930 and 1936, it is the highest concrete arch-gravity dam in the United States. It impounds Lake Mead, which extends for 115 miles (185 km) upstream and is one of the largest artificial lakes in the world. The dam is used for flood and silt control, hydroelectric power, agricultural irrigation, and domestic water supply. It is also a major sightseeing destination, with some seven million visitors a year, almost one million of whom go on tours through the dam.
Hoover Dam is 726 feet (221 metres) high and 1,244 feet (379 metres) long at the crest. It contains 4,400,000 cubic yards (3,360,000 cubic metres) of concrete. Four reinforced-concrete intake towers located above the dam divert water from the reservoir into huge steel pipes called penstocks. The water, after falling some 500 feet (150 metres) through the pipes to a hydroelectric power plant in the base of the dam, turns 17 Francis-type vertical hydraulic turbines, which rotate a series of electric generators that have a total power capacity of 2,080 megawatts. Nearly half of the generated electric power goes to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the city of Los Angeles, and other destinations in southern California; the rest goes to Nevada and Arizona. The dam, power plant, and reservoir are owned and managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation.
Spillway, Arizona side. The spillways have only been used twice. Once in 1941 for testing and in 1983 for flood control
Another view of the spillway
Watch out! That first step is a real doozie
According to the Bureau of Reclamation lake Mead is at approx 30% capacity.
Eight hydraulic turbines, Nevada side. There are nine more turbines on the Arizona side.
This large pipe, called a Penstock, delivers water to the hydraulic turbines
Emergency Exit. 700' of stairs going up at a 55° angle
Interior tunnel
Fancy floor
Comments
Spillway
This is a photo that was hanging on a wall showing the last time the spillways were used when water level got to within 7 ft of the top of the dam. That was in 1983.
MAGA
Morons
Are
Governing
America
I had the pleasure of working for the former Regional Director
of the Lower Colorado, which is the lower 700 miles of river. I was doing carpentry at his house. While working we began talking more and more and eventually he gave me a book he'd written about his predecessor who was the first guy to deal with all of the conflicts amongst states etc.
Besides fighting over water, and the hydropower, they also have to try to regulate the flow such that the river itself and all the plants and animals that depend on the water and the flow of the water survive and hopefully flourish.
He was a very modest and unassuming fellow, and yet obviously extremely bright, a good combination for all of the conflicting interests of that river. He'd at first worked as a geologist for petroleum with an undergrad degree, then during the huge layoffs of the early 80s he went back to school eventually becoming interested in randomness which he studied for his Phd. When you consider it, randomness would be a helpful thing to try to predict what a river is going to do next. He developed a way to make a model of what the river would do based on data that was continuously updated.
I've never been much below the confluence of the Green which is just over the Colorado border in Utah.
Hi, ban nock
If you ever get have the opportunity to visit the dam, don't pass it up. It's quite the engineering marvel.
MAGA
Morons
Are
Governing
America
Still one great engineering and
construction feat. No AI involved. But the lack of rain is a problem.
Hi, marie
That's no lie. Lack of rain is a problem for all of the western states. Things are only going to get worse unless we get a bunch of consecutive winters with a lot of rain and snow.
MAGA
Morons
Are
Governing
America
Great pictures, sp!
Hoover damn, a place I have explored twice, is an engineering marvel live the Panama Canal, which I have visited once, or the canal in China I visited where Marco polo saw.
Humans can do great things when dollar signs, or the equivalent, do not blind us.
Thanks for the memories, friend!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981