The Nurek (Norak) Dam

The Nurek (Norak) Dam (Tajik: Нерӯгоҳи обии Норак, Nerūgohi obii Norak, Tajikistan for Nurek Hydro-electric Station) is a large earth fill dam located at 38.3715 N, 69.3492 E on the Vakhsh River in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan. At 300 metres (984 ft), it is the highest dam in the world of 2008. (The Rogun Dam, under construction along the Vakhsh also in Tajikistan, is expected to exceed the Nurek when completed, against a projected height of 335 m (1099 ft)). The construction of the dam began in 1961 and was completed in 1980, when Tajikistan was still a republic within the Soviet Union.

Construction
The Nurek Dam was built by the Soviet Union between the years 1961 and 1980. It is uniquely constructed, with a core of cement forms an impermeable barrier within a 300 m (980 ft)-high rock and earth fill construction. The volume of the hill is 54 million cubic metres. The hydro-electric dam comprises nine production units, the first contract in 1972 and the last in 1979.
The dam is located in a deep ravine along the Vakhsh River in western Tajikistan, about 75 km (47 miles) east of the nation's capital of Dushanbe. A city near the dam, also known as Nurek, houses engineers and other workers at the dam of the plant.

Electricity generation
There are a total of nine hydro-electric turbines are installed in the Nurek Dam. Originally with a production capacity of 300 megawatts each (2.7 GW total), they have since been redesigned and retrofitted so that they now combine the production of 3.0 GW. As of 1994, this constituted the largest part of the nation 4.0 GW hydro-electric capacity, which is sufficient to meet 98% of the nation is electricity needs.



Reservoir
The reservoir formed by the Nurek Dam, known simply as Nurek, is the largest reservoir in Tajikistan with a capacity of 10.5 km ³. The tank is more than 70 km (40 miles) in length and covers an area of 98 square kilometres (38 square miles). The tank fuels the moving within the hydroelectric dam, and the storage of water is also used for irrigation of local farmland. 14 kilometers of irrigation water is transported through the Dangara irrigation tunnel and is used to irrigate about 700 square kilometres (300 square miles) of farmland. It is suspected that the reservoir can be caused induced seismicity.
In February 2008, during the 2008 Central Asia-energy crisis, the reservoir has dropped to six meters, an alarmingly low level, according to the energy sector representatives.

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