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The Scale of Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges Dam wall is made of concrete and is about 2,309 meters (7,575 ft) long, and 101 meters (331 ft) high. The wall is 115 meters (377.3 ft) thick on the bottom and 40 meters (131.2 ft) thick on top. The project used 27,200,000 cubic meters (35,600,000 cu yd) of concrete, 463,000 tons of steel, enough to build 63 Eiffel Towers, and moved about 102,600,000 cubic meters (1.342E+8 cu yd) of earth.
When the water level is maximum at 175 meters (574 ft) over sea level (91 meters (299 ft) above river level), the reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam is about 660 kilometers (410 mi) in length and 1.12 kilometers (0.70 mi) in width on average, and contains 39.3 cu km (9.43 cubic miles) of water. The total surface area of the reservoir is 1045 km2. The reservoir will flood a total area of 632 km2 of land compared to the 1,350 km2 of reservoir created by the Itaipu Dam. The Three Gorges Dam reservoir is longer than the 560 kilometers (348 mi) length of Lake Superior, but only 1.1 % of the surface area of the lake (82,400 km2) and about 1/700 of the volume of the lake (28700 cu km).
