Mosul Dam

Can you imagine anything more valuable than a water supply in the desert? Now add to this an electrical outlet that provides great amounts of energy. What value! Such is the situation for the Mosul Dam in Iraq. Being on the Tigris River, sometimes known as the birthplace of western civilization, this fairly recent dam provides a hugely valuable resource for the nearby town of Mosul. More than imagination, it is reality.

Now get you mind around the scope of this project. In 1985, with the dam freshly complete, its reservoir began the filling of about 1.11e+13 litres behind its walls. The dam’s generators provide about 6.57e+9 kWh/yr. It cost about $1.5B to build and was operational by 1986. Mosul has a population of about 1.8M. Assuming that the population has been constant and that the power generation is constant then we see that the inhabitants are using a per capita electrical energy consumption of 3650 kWh/person. Compare this to a typical Canadian household energy consumption of 4741 kWh/year, a global maximum. So, this dam puts the residents of Mosul on an energy consumption level near to that of the global peak.

Perhaps it is the value of this resource that attracts so much strife recently. In any case, assuming that its engineering is sound, the dam has many more years of operational usage; assuming that its maintenance continues. Can we be confident that all our civilization’s energy infrastructure will remain viable for as long as we need the energy? Will the endless kilometres of pipelines, the huge oil tankers and the plethora of coal fired plants continue providing energy on demand? Or, can you imagine some simple breakdown of this infrastructure that will bring us to a new reality?

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