Reservoirs and dams in the Commonwealth of Independent States

Industrialization reached Russia later than Western Europe and North America, and one of the few large scale dams dating from the Tsarist era is on the Volkhov near St Petersburg (opened 1926). However with Lenin's declaration "Communism is Soviet Power Plus the Electrification of the Whole Country" (22 December 1920), dam building began in earnest, to a more functional design. One of the first was the "DneproGES" (Dnieper Hydroelectric Station) dam on the Dnieper in Ukraine completed in 1932 using US generators. Important for rendering the Dnieper navigable, it was destroyed by the retreating Soviet army in 1941 but rebuilt along with many new dams in the post-war period. The Dnieper now has six major hydroelectric dams and the larger Volga river has nine, each up to 50m high with shipping locks and generating up to 3000MW.

In the post-war period, Soviet engineers rose to new challenges, not only designing dams in Soviet Central Asia and Siberia which are among the largest in the world, but also advising on schemes around the world, notably the Aswan Dam and many schemes in China. Today, dams in the new Central Asian Republics are of particular significance: the electricity they produce represent badly-needed natural resource, while the control of scarce water may prove a source of conflict. Recent political and economic turmoil has put several projects years behind schedule and some of those completed are being poorly maintained, potentially dangerously so. The former USSR now has a total hydroelectric capacity of around 60,000MW, about 20% of electricity use (varying from 0% in Belarus to 89% in Georgia). The larger dams are tabulated below.

Name	River/Reservoir	Height	Length	Power	Type	Date
Volkhov	Volkhov	11m	212m	83MW	Gravity	1926
Dneprovsk	Dnieper	60m	760m	1300MW	Gravity	1932
Volgograd¹	Volga	47m	3974m	2500MW	Earth/Rock Fill	1960
Irkutsk	Angara River/Lake Baikal	44m	2500m	650MW	Earth Fill	1956
Bratsk	Angara River-Oka-Iya³	124m	4417m	4500MW	Earth Fill/Gravity	1967
Ust-Ilimsk	Angara River-Ilim	105m	3725m	4300MW	Earthfill/Gravity	1974
Boguchany²	Angara River	79m	1816m	4000MW	Rock Fill
Sayano-Shushenskaya	Yenisei	242m	1066m	6400MW	Arch/Gravity	1989
Krasnoyarsk (Divnogorsk)	Yenisei	119m	1065m	6000MW	Gravity	1968
Zeya	Zeya (Russian Far East)	115m	758m	1290MW	Buttress	1975
Bureya²	Bureya (Russian Far East)	139m	810m	2000MW	Gravity
Chirkey	Sulak (Dagestan)	230m	333m	1000MW	Arch	1977
Nurek	Vakhsh (Tajikistan)	300m	704m	3000MW	Earth Fill	1980
Rogun²	Vakhsh (Tajikistan)	335m	660m	3600MW	Earth/Rock Fill
Ingurskaya	Inguri (Georgia)	270m	680m	1250MW	Arch	1984
Toktogul	Naryn (Kyrgyzstan)	215m	293m	1200MW	Gravity	1978

¹Several dams this size on the Volga.
²Still under construction.
³At 169km³, the "Dragon Lake" is the world's largest artificial reservoir (until Three Gorges Dam is operational).

Since the 1930s, most of the dam design in the USSR (and, later, in independent Russia) has been conducted by the design institute that since 1957 has been known as Hydroproject.

External links

* [http://www.industcards.com/hydro-russia.htm Chirkey Dam photo]
* [http://lkirchner.de/kodar/kodar.html Bratsk Dam photo]
* [http://sp.drbit.ru/gallery/albums/Sayan-1057%3B-1072%3B-1103%3B-1085%3B/13_G.jpgSayano-Shushenskaya Dam photo]
* [http://www.psa.ac.uk/cps/1998/ohara.pdf Central Asia - Further Reading]