What would it take to have the Hoover Dam fail. Taking in to consideration any possible method of failure to include how to manualy remove the dam. What would happen down stream of this dam failure. What would be the economic impacts and would the dam be rebuilt?
While it involves some hypotheticals or conjectures, it is still more of a General Question than a Great Debate, so I am moving this thread to GQ.
I ran across a two page article describing some of the aftereffects of the dam being destroyed a while back.
How would you make the dam fail
For a fictionalized version that seems pretty valid anyway, try the novel Wet Desert by Gary Hansen, who works (or worked?) at the Bureau of Reclamation. The fictionalized part is the story of someone trying to destroy it. What happens to the Dams and what can be done to save it, what will destroy it, etc. all seem realistic to my non-hydro-engineer mind.
J.
It’s just a huge concrete structure. That being said, you could certainly set charges inside the Dam that would weaken it to a point where it began to fail, at least in certain areas. Whether this would lead to a complete collapse would depend on how many charges you used, how big they were, and where they were placed.
If the US military had an urgent need to destroy the entire dam I’m sure they would have the munitions and know-how to do it…
How to destroy a dam? Aerial bombardment with bunker busters ought to be able to get it to the point where the water rips through eventually. If you have unrestricted access to the dam, there are any number of passages and tunnels throughought the structure that can be packed with arbitrarily large quantities of high explosive.
In WWII, some German dams were destroyed by allied forces using bouncing bombs that exploded underwater upstream of the dam for a particularly destructive effect.
What would happen downstream? History offers all kinds of lessons.
Would it be rebuilt? Depends who you talk to, but the region has grown dependent on the electricity, flood control, and irrigation water provided by the dam. I would expect it to be rebuilt.
Although unlikely for the area, a big earth quake should do it, don’t ya think?
They are removing a dam on the Klamath River in Oregon. Press releases say it is the largest such project ever attempted. The press releases don’t say how they are doing it. They say it will cost a half billion. Even the National Geographic series on the Klamath River does not say how the removal will be effected but all indications are it will be done.
BTW, I think it is a very interesting question. I have stood on the bridge at Lake Powell and wondered what would happen to the Hoover Dam if the dam at Lake Powell were to go into a catastrophic failure.
I think these days it wouldn’t be much of an issue because the water level in both of those reservoirs have been chronically low for the last decade. Lake Mead is only slightly larger than Lake Powell, but both are usually well below 50% capacity so at most times Lake Mead could absorb the entire volume of Lake Powell with no problems. Folks from Vegas could use those boat launches that have been hopelessly high and dry for years!
I took a tour of the dam around 1993. In those days they took you deep inside along some of the service corridors within the structure; it seemed a bit strange at one point to pass by an office of some kind with a waiting area outside, and a typical government issue bland couch for people to sit on while they waited–and all this far below the lake’s surface level and so subject to millions of tons of pressure.
The guide told us that the concrete in the dam was still curing and would do so for about 1500 years. Then it would somehow “uncure” for about 1500 more years, at which point it would be susceptible to failure. Does that sound plausible to any of the engineers or builders around here?
FWIW the pressure at the bottom of the dam (on the upstream side) is about 256 pounds per square inch (though to be fair, because there are so many square inches on the face of the dam, the total force ends up being several million tons).
The curing is an exponential decay process. The less uncured material there is, the slower the curing. Wikipedia claims that core testing has shown that the concrete has continued to gain strength over the 60 years since its construction.
Core testing? They actually drill holes in the dam to test the concrete?
I was going to give my standard answer on how to destroy any dam (if you aren’t in a particular hurry) – close the pinstocks and flood gates and walk away. Overtopping will eventually scour away the toe of the dam and it will then fail and be carried away. However the above linked article specifically mentions that the deign of the Hoover dam takes this into account.
Whoda thunk it?
Is anyone else wondering why he’s asking?
*And *his name is Redsky. Cooincidence? I think not…
A story today on how a much smaller dam, 200 feet, is to be destroyed in Washington: Dams to Be Removed in Washington to Replenish Salmon - NYTimes.com “Our Plan A is to use hydraulic hammers,” said Brian Krohmer, the project manager for the contractor overseeing the removal, Barnard Construction. “Plan B is explosives.”