A Chinese geology team has identified an active fault line, the Paizhen Fault, directly beneath a major hydropower project under construction on the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River in Tibet, warning that its significant activity since the Pleistocene epoch poses a substantial risk to the dam's infrastructure, including structural stability, slope integrity, and the overall bearing capacity of the foundation, urging engineers to implement strengthened slope stabilization and retaining protections to mitigate potential landslides and collapses in the geologically weak and fractured terrain within the project's reservoir area.

A Chinese geology team has identified an active fault line, the Paizhen Fault, directly beneath a major hydropower project under construction on the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River in Tibet, warning that its significant activity since the Pleistocene epoch poses a substantial risk to the dam's infrastructure, including structural stability, slope integrity, and the overall bearing capacity of the foundation, urging engineers to implement strengthened slope stabilization and retaining protections to mitigate potential landslides and collapses in the geologically weak and fractured terrain within the project's reservoir area.

A Chinese geology team has identified an active fault line, the Paizhen Fault, directly beneath a major hydropower project under construction on the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River in Tibet, warning that its significant activity since the Pleistocene epoch poses a substantial risk to the dam's infrastructure, including structural stability, slope integrity, and the overall bearing capacity of the foundation, urging engineers to implement strengthened slope stabilization and retaining protections to mitigate potential landslides and collapses in the geologically weak and fractured terrain within the project's reservoir area.

A Chinese geology team have determined that there is an active fault line directly under the country’s major hydropower project being built on the northern part of the Brahmaputra or the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet.

The team warned engineers that a fracture in the Earth's crust would significantly impact the project’s infrastructure.

The study was published in the Chinese-language journal Sedimentary Geology and Tethyan Geology and was conducted by geologists from the Chengdu University of Technology, the Civil-Military Integration Centre of the China Geological Survey, and the Middle Yarlung Zangbo River Natural Resources Observation and Research Station, the South China Morning Post reported.

In a paper, the team warned engineers to strengthen slope stability and add retaining protections to the structure to mitigate the risk of landslides and collapses.

“The Paizhen Fault, which has been highly active since the Pleistocene [also known as the Ice Age], will have a major impact on the structural stability and construction of nearby structures, including dams, roads, bridges and tunnels, as well as the reservoir area,” the researchers wrote.

“This makes the foundation bearing capacity and structural stability of nearby engineering projects more susceptible to damage.

“The Paizhen area is located within the reservoir area of the Yarlung Tsangpo downstream hydropower station,” the study noted.

The active fault, according to them, fractured the surrounding rocks and altered their mechanical properties.

The terrain the dam is being built on has a “loose structure and weak cohesion”, they said. They warned that“after long-term immersion and under the influence of fault activity and earthquakes, instability of the slopes on both sides of the reservoir area can be extremely easily triggered”.

The hydropower project, said to be the largest of its kind, is being built in the Medog county near the bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo, where the river makes a sharp U-turn before entering India as the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh, before becoming the Brahmaputra and later the Yamuna in Bangladesh.

The construction started last year. The project is said to be able to generate an annual capacity of 00 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The construction of the dam had raised major concerns about water supply and environmental impacts downstream in India and Bangladesh.

The project is overseen by the state-owned China Yajiang Group. The project is expected to be functioning by 2030.

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