Strategy of hydropower development

Abstract

Serious difficulties in the country's economy and a sharp worsening of human living conditions have forced us to critically reevaluate the results and direction of further development of the entire industrial base of the economy, including its power sector. The need for a rapid increase of all power objects--coal mines and strip mines, electric power stations, and high-voltage transmission lines --that seemed obvious earlier has become the subject of discussion both by the public and by a broad range of specialists and scientists.Along with such most important sectors of the power base of the USSR as fuel enterprises, thermal power, nuclear plants, district heating, etc., hydropower, its past and long-term development, have also been reviewed.In a number of statements in the press and at public forums, various, including negative, evaluations have been given to the wide construction of hydro developments and reservoirs in various regions of the country. Hydropower facilities proposed for construction on the Daugava, Tom', Upper Volga, in the lower course and on the tributaries of the Enisei, on the Amur and its tributaries Zeya and Bureya, as well as the construction of a number of pumped-storage stations in the European part of the USSR have been questioned or rejected. Suggestions have been made about reducing the backwater elevations of certain dams and decreasing the regulating capacity of reservoirs, power, and sequence of constructing planned and abuilding hydro developments on the Volga, Kama, Irtysh, Vakhsh, on rivers of the Far East, etc.However, the vital interests of industry, agriculture, and the population of many regions at present and in the future are closely related to the use of hydropower resources. Therefore, modernization of the technical decisions made in a number of cases in hydropower engineering, and mainly the direction of future hydropower construction and rate of its development should be objectively verified on the basis of realities and common sense.General problems and requirements imposed on the development of electric power engineering as a whole and, first and foremost, establishment of the country's need for an increase of plants for generating electricity are the initial ones in this examination. On this depends also the place which hydropower production will occupy in the future power industry.Modern civilization, with its industrial enterprises, farms, urban agglomerations, electrified transport, mode of life, water supply, heating, and power base of culture and communications, owes its existence and development to electric power generation. The world consumption of electricity has already exceeded a vast quantity, 11 trillion kWh per year (i.e., 220 kWh per capita of the planet) and continues to increase.It is natural that the weU-being and culture of human society can only approximately be regarded as direct consequences of their provision with electricity.