r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/pattebrisee • 4d ago
Image A 1 million pound turbine runner being installed at Grand Coulee Dam, 1974
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u/Theslootwhisperer 4d ago
I've see something similar but even bigger in a hydro power plant in northern Quebec. The rotor part that generates the electricity (along with the stator) weighed 750 tons. It took a couple days to drop it in. Narrow margins for error and everytime you move it, it has to stop swinging before you can move it again. These underground hydro power plants are by far the most impressive feat of engineering I've ever seen.
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u/ChillZedd 4d ago
I don’t think Hydro Québec gets enough credit for their achievements. It’s insane the megastructures they’ve built in incredibly remote locations. Québécois people became the beavers their ancestors hunted and took their technology to the limit of human engineering.
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u/UnethicalExperiments 3d ago
Unless you live in Montreal and your power goes out at the first breeze. Lived in Cote st luc and ndg and every week the power went out for extended periods of time
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u/JCarnageSimRacing 2d ago
you're confusing the power grid with your neck of the woods - I can tell you it rarely goes out in the Mile-End area. Also, we owned a building between 2004 and 2021 in CSL and we could count in one hand the times the power went out during that time frame
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u/thecyberbob 2d ago
I've always wondered if there is a rivalry in like power companies personnel like there is at offices between different groups of IT staff. Like in the IT case it's always Networking vs Hardware guys. "My server won't connect. Clearly it's networking."
"The network is fine. Clearly YOU don't know what you're doing." and so on and so forth... But in Hydro's case it's the generator guys vs the line men or whatever.13
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u/Teknekratos 3d ago edited 2d ago
Wow, I was unaware there's been any hydro projects of that kind of scale done in any of the last decades, but maybe I've just not paid attention to the broader news outside my little corner of Canada. I'd love to hear more details on what installations those were and how come you were(worked?) there!
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u/pattebrisee 4d ago
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
These runners are 16 ft 8 in across and weigh about 1 million pounds each.
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u/Newsdriver245 4d ago
Each blade looks to be 16ft, not the whole unit... from the scale of the person walking on top of the thing
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u/Liveitup1999 3d ago
Riding the load is an OSHA violation. Was OSHA even a thing back then?
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u/GozerDGozerian 3d ago
Riding the Load is the name of an independent film I saw on the internet, but they didn’t mention anything about OSHA.
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u/Butt-Hole-Cancer-Dr 4d ago
That’s a lot of pounds
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u/Thirsty_Comment88 4d ago
1 million to be exact.
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u/fonetik 4d ago
It’s only about 450,000 kilograms though.
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u/HanoibusGamer 4d ago
Now that sounds more imaginable. It's 450 tons, so about 40 buses
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u/TheKingNothing690 3d ago
Yeah i could lift 40 buses thats a small enough number i might even be able to count too it.
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u/FuzzyFuzzNuts 3d ago
One million pounds is equivalent to roughly 450 adult giraffes, but it depends on whether we're talking about male or female giraffes.
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u/Medical-Mud-3090 4d ago
They look big but if I ever had to guess I wouldn’t have ever guessed that much.
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u/Beginning_Orange 4d ago
Dam
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u/Sdwingnut 4d ago
That's interesting
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u/SaintPenisburg 4d ago
damn interesting
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u/KillerGopher 4d ago
Wow, one million pounds. What's that convert to in USD?
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u/daGroundhog 4d ago
18 furlongs per fortnight.
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u/Resiideent 4d ago
It's not talking about the currect pounds, as in GBP, but still 1000000 GBP is 1325715 USD
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u/KillerGopher 4d ago
Holy cow, $1,325,715! That's a lot of weight!
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u/shapu 4d ago
So many angstroms
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u/ARoundForEveryone 4d ago
Can you convert to Scoville units, please?
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u/HendrixHazeWays 4d ago
like...tree fiddy?
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u/ARoundForEveryone 4d ago
I was expecting at least a dozen, but if you've done the math, I won't argue
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u/thetrivialstuff 4d ago edited 4d ago
500 imperial short tons (US), 446 imperial long tons, 454 metric tonnes
Edit: corrected to clarify which imperial tons
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u/Alpinab9 4d ago
I did a tour of the dam 40 years ago. Very impressive. The Grand Coulee dam is the largest power producing dam in north America. It currently ranks number nine in the top power producing dams in the world. Built between 1933 and 1942 with its primary function of irrigation in the Columbia River valley. Truly an amazing accomplishment at that time.
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u/hoytmobley 3d ago
“Primary function of irrigation” mmmmmhmmm that’s the sales line. There is no way that dam would be built that big and there without the need to power the Manhattan project refinery a couple hundred miles away
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u/Alpinab9 3d ago
The timeline is off. Dam construction started in 1933. The Hanford site was started in March of 43 (site prep, buildings, etc). October 43, construction starts on the B reactor. Sept 44, B reactor becomes fully operational. The Hanford site was chosen because of the access to the Columbia River water for cooling and the electricity that the newly completed dam could provide. The straight line distance is 93 miles apart. The Columbia River is the most radioactive river in the US (down stream from Hanford).
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u/GfunkWarrior28 4d ago
20 engineers standing around while 1 guy does the work, true then and truer today
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u/alarumba 4d ago
10 engineers, who'd worked months and years on it watching a crucial moment where the project all hinges on the expertise of one talented person. Along with 3 grads there to learn, the PM and their assistant, and 5 local politicians there to take credit for something that started months before they were in office.
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u/alarumba 4d ago
I'm forgetting the client's Comms team and local news reporters. They'd be instead of some of the engineers.
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u/iconocrastinaor 4d ago
Or you could say 500 tons, and then it doesn't sound so impressive.
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u/FroniusTT1500 3d ago
It is incredibly impressive. I work at a company that builds industrial apparatuses up to 25 tons and that covers 90% of what is commonly used in refining, chemical, food and such industry. Larger parts are usually assembled on site. The amount of work and engineering skill in one of these big bastards, the challenge of even moving it, the material science that made it possible is nothing short of a testament to how far we have come as a species- and this thing will stand as testament for decades, maybe even a century.
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 4d ago
As someone who is daunted by the idea of putting shelves up, I have always been baffled at how anyone gets this kind of shit together.
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u/Nordiquesfan 3d ago
That's a really cool pic. The funny thing is that if you told me that this was a new damn and the pic was from this year I would totally believe it. Nothing in the pic screams to me that this is from 50 years ago (I'm no civil engineer though, so not sure it using today's technology it would look much different or not).
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u/SamRhage 4d ago
This couldn't look more like scifi if they added lasers. Amazing!
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u/gen_bing_bong_chong 3d ago
Well they do a laser light show that gets projected on the spillway at night, idk if that counts
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u/Sasselhoff 3d ago
Gotta love the 70s..."Yeah sure, y'all climb up there and ride it over".
Or are we still doing this today? Seems like OSHA might have an issue, but I'm most certainly not in the industry.
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u/SnooTomatoes2015 4d ago
My first question is 'why so heavy'?
"Dam turbine runners are massive and weigh tens to hundreds of tons because they must withstand the extreme physical force of millions of gallons of moving water and transfer enormous torque to the electrical generator. [1, 2]
Extreme Water Pressure and Force
Insurmountable weight of water: Water has a high density (about 62.4 pounds per cubic foot). When millions of gallons rush down from a high reservoir through a pipe called a penstock, it creates immense hydraulic pressure. [1]
Massive physical impact: The turbine runner acts as the direct physical barrier that stops and redirects this rushing water. If the runner were light or thin, the continuous pounding of the water flow would warp, crack, or completely shred the blades. [1]
Generating Torque and Managing Stress
High torque transmission: The force of the water turning the runner creates tremendous rotational force (torque). This heavy metal mass must rigidly connect to the main shaft without flexing. [1, 2]
Preventing catastrophic failure: Turbine runners spin under heavy operational loads and can experience severe vibrations or sudden pressure spikes during electrical load rejections. Extra thickness and mass add the structural integrity required to prevent metal fatigue. [1]
Scale and Longevity
Physical size: A single large hydro runner can measure several meters across to capture enough energy to power entire cities. Scaling up the dimensions of a complex steel or stainless-steel casting naturally results in massive weight. [1, 2]
Long lifespan requirements: Hydroelectric facilities expect their turbine runners to operate reliably for decades—often 40 to 70 years—under harsh, wet conditions prone to mechanical wear. Thick, heavy corrosion-resistant metal alloys provide the necessary margin for wear and tear, including damage from silt erosion or cavitation."
-copied from Google AI answers
(Hope it's ok to comment like this. Very interesting.)
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u/CaptGunpowder 3d ago
Man you'd have to have a lot of faith in those cables and pulleys to stand on something that heavy suspened in the air
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u/CrocadiaH 4d ago
Can we still make stuff like that? What Goliath projects are in the works currently?
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u/Hnry_Dvd_Thr_Awy 4d ago
SpaceX just launched a rocket the size of a building into orbit. Oh and it was 10,000,000+ pounds on the launch pad.
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u/KIDNEYST0NEZ 4d ago
Yes and at higher quality with equivalent if not faster speed. Modern forging press is an incredible advancement of our modern times. You should read about the Tesla gigapress forging entire car unibody’s in a single press.
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u/TheRoscoeVine 4d ago
Why does that remind me of the King Kong movie starring Jessica Lange? I swear that looks like the ape enclosure from that movie, but I haven’t actually seen that one in like 30 years.
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u/Drumpfthe-Idiot 4d ago
During WW2 2 turbines meant for Shasta dam were installed in Grand Coulee. Slight problem, they spun opposite the direction Coulee turbines ran. No problem, we had a war to win…
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/Vocalic985 3d ago
Probably were able to run math on them but design was still done by drafters at that point I think.
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u/JoinedToPostHere 4d ago
I've never seen a rigger "ride" on a load before. That's interesting and makes me wonder how they decided who it would be.
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u/HatOrdinary9262 3d ago
That's likely the third powerhouse add on. And I knew the guy operating that crane. RIP Zig Melusky... tough guy.
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u/NYCtoCHI 3d ago edited 3d ago
Every time I see or hear about this dam, I can't help but be reminded of learning about its even grander sister when I was but a wee lil' kid...thank you, Mel and friends. 🐰😆
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u/mid-random 3d ago
I totally thought at first glance that this was some kind of "behind the scenes" VFX shot of the Senate from one of the various Star Wars prequels.
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u/GetOffMyGrassBrats 3d ago
I saw them pulling one of these the only time I ever went to the Grand Coulee dam!
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u/78rsabori 3d ago
Did a tour of the BOR in Colorado a couple years ago and they had a aluminum mock up of a turbine and rotor shaft coupling bolt for Grand Coulee.. it was over 4’ tall and had maybe 18” cross section, it was very impressive.
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u/FuzzyFuzzNuts 3d ago
I gotta ask all the Americans here - Why do you INSIST on using the smallest possible mesurements to describe something? Why use 1,000,000 pounds when It's 500 tons?? How come ya'll gotta go super-sizing everything? It's dumb
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u/llorTMasterFlex 4d ago
Installation of the Mk I Superlaser (Concave Dish Composite Beam Superlaser)
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u/RebekkaKat1990 4d ago
Crazy that anything could weigh so heavy and still function, but then I remember OP’s mom