China’s Three Gorges Dam is an awe-inspiring sight, a vast barrier across the Yangtze River that contains enough concrete to fill seven Wembley Stadiums and more steel than eight Empire State Buildings. Its turbines could singlehandedly power the Philippines.
But this summer, the world’s largest power plant was eerily quiet.
On a late August visit to the facility, water on both sides of the dam was still. There was no sign of the white spray that usually rises from the the spillway or roar of water emerging from the the turbines. Scorching temperatures and a drought upstream have reduced the reservoir to a bare minimum, drastically reducing the plant’s ability to generate electricity.