YICHANG, January 18 (Xinhua) -- Damming of the man-made canal specially built to facilitate the passing of Yangtze River water will be one of the six major tasks scheduled for completion this year as part of a mammoth water control dam near the Three Gorges on the middle reaches of the Yangtze.
The other five tasks include removing the cofferdam upstream in May, installing the permanent ship lock and related systems in June, putting the permanent ship lock into trial operation in July before water flows in, removing the cofferdam downstream in September, and putting the ship lock into trial operation at the end of the year after water flows in.
Water storage at the Three Gorges will begin in 2003, when the first group of generating units and the permanent ship lock will be put into operation, said an executive with the China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corporation.
Construction on the world's largest hydropower project, located near Yichang in central China's Hubei Province, began in 1993 with estimated static investment of 50.09 billion yuan (about 6.04 billion U.S. dollars), upon completion in 2009.
The project consists of a 1,983-meter-long and 185-meter-high dam and 26 generating units with a combined capacity of 18.2 million kw and an annual output of 84.7 billion kwh. The permanent ship lock can accommodate ships with total 10,000 dwt.
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