Hydroelectric Engineering in the Tarim Basin

[Pelranius]

All right, how feasible is this project?

Let's say that the Chinese Communist Party tomorrow decides to build a canal from the Yellow Sea to the Tarim Basin, which most of its terrain is below sea level. Now such a canal would be used for hydroelectric applications, just like the hypothesized Qattara project.

I imagine that evaporation and desalinization by nuclear power would also go a long way to reversing desertification in northern and western China.

Now the Canal would be built through the use of nuclear demolition charges, though one would naturally need a lot of workers to actually make the thing work after the excavations by the power of the Consecrated Atom.

I was just thinking back on some proposals to build a canal from the Arctic Ocean to the Aral Sea (or was it the Caspian?)

Now fire away. Am I a visionary or just another Internet fanboy tard?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

This project would certainly be, at the very least, much more difficult than the others, as the Tarim Basin is nearly two thousand kilometers from the sea and there are mountains and high terrain for almost all of that trip. There's also the distinct issue of the Tarim Basin being far above sea level; did you mean the Turfan Depression? That's in the same general area, but is much smaller and actually below sea level.

[Pelranius]

Oh snap!

I meant the Turfan Depression.

Turfan instead of Tarim, how did I mix that up?

[Sea Skimmer]

Now the Canal would be built through the use of nuclear demolition charges, though one would naturally need a lot of workers to actually make the thing work after the excavations by the power of the Consecrated Atom.

You need literally 2000 nuclear warheads to make that work.... each of them expended in an incredibly dirty initiation which will spread heavy fallout over some of the most densely populated regions of China. Avoiding contamination of the Yellow River which serves over 100 million people would be virtually impossible.

Its unnecessary anyway, if you don’t care one bit about the environment then China already has numerous sites suitable for more hydropower dams, such as the proposed Nu river complex which would be by far the worlds largest hydropower complex. IIRC at least one of the dams proposed for that river would also be larger then the Three Gorges project.

I was just thinking back on some proposals to build a canal from the Arctic Ocean to the Aral Sea (or was it the Caspian?)

Neither, the plan was to divert water from the Volga and Ob rivers to save the Aral Sea. The canals would have used extensive pumping systems to reduce the required scale of excavations, the canal would not generate power, it would guzzle it down, to be supplied by hydropower dams on both rivers.