The Cabora Bassa dam (those today "Cahora Bassa is called "; Cabora Bassa is the designation from the colonial age) in Mozambique, province Tete is one of the largest dams of the world.

Concrete dam

The concrete dam was built between 1969 and 1979 by the Portuguese in its colony at that time. Those approx. 165 m high elbow rope wall is appropriate for about 700 km before its delta in a mountain bottleneck at the lower Sambesi in Mozambique, into the Indian ocean and serves mainly the generation of current. At the building companies from South Africa, Italy, France, Portugal and Germany were involved.

Already to beginning of planning the anti-colonial liberation movement FRELIMO resisted the dam project. With a campaign against Cabora Bassa followed also the student movement of the German Federal Republic the resistance.

Only 1998 began current production under Portuguese line. In November 2005 the Mozambican president communicated Armando Guebuza that Mozambique with a payment of 787.4 million euro wants to take over control.

Power station

The accumulated water feeds a power station of 1,760 megawatts, for whose current production mostly by means of the 1414 kilometers Cabora Bassa are enough for high voltage direct current transmission into the neighbouring Republic of South Africa are sold. The underground power house has five sets with 415 MW each. According to other data the total output is 2425 MW. 1975 were produced the first river.

Artificial lake

The artificial lake is approx. 250 km long, 2,800 km largely and has pilot contents of 65 billion m (after Rissler only 63 billion). The catchment area covers 900,000 km In it the partial catchment areas enclosed above lying dams of the Kariba at 520.000 km are and Kafue at 150.000 km

Flood discharge

The concrete dam has a remarkable flood discharge in the lower third of the wall. There there are eight armored wall passages, which throw the water jet in a high elbow up to 300 m far into the Flussbett. Each passage has an efficiency of 1700 m /s; the water withdraws during full load with a speed of 36 m/s.

Literature

• Bosgra, Sietse (1972). Cabora Bassa. A dam against the African. Berlin
• The Entlastungsanlage of the Sambesi dam Cabora Bassa, Ulrich Pawlitzki, water management 70 (March 1980)

See also

• The largest artificial lakes of the earth

Related links

• "Portugal separates from Cahora Bassa ", Telepolis, 4 December 2005

Articles in category "Cabora Bassa dam"

We found here 5 articles.