American Society of Civil Engineers has recognized as the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World”, this Dam is one of the biggest hydroelectric power plants worldwide.

Situated at the upper area of the Parana River where the boundaries of Paraguay and Brazil meets, the dam was a joint project of both governments.

Nearby 40,000 workers were in use during the years the dam was in construction and thousands of citizens had to be moved. There is sufficient steel and iron in the Itaipu Dam to construct 380 Eiffel Towers and the development required enough material to build five Hoover Dams.

The height of the dam is 643 feet and is near about 5 miles long. While, the main part of the dam is made of big concrete segments that are combined together to form a void chamber, the dam is really several different dams linked together. To the left of the core section is an earth fill dam, then the dam rockfill also on the right, a concrete building dam.

As the dam’s construction is quite extraordinary, the powerhouse is especially amazing. Partially plunged in the Parana River, it considers one-half of a mile lengthy and consists of twenty hydroelectric generators that evaluate 53 feet across. Every generator creates about 700 megawatts of power as about 160 tons of water streams through each turbine each second.

Initially, the dam comprises totally 18 generators; however, two more were included in 2006 and 2007 finishing the entire project. The entire generating power of the plant is 14,000 megawatts, although a treaty among Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina simply allows 18 units to run at one moment.

Argentina had worry that if some arguments arose, Brazil would release the flood doors and flood in the Buenos Aires the capital of the country. The Acordo Tripartite was sign in 1979, creating limits on how many the levels of water would be increased in the watershed share by all three countries.

With the conclusion of the 18 original generators in 1982, the inland waterway gates were closed starting the dam’s reservoir. After the next two weeks, grave rains resulting in flooding grounds the water to lift around 330 feet reached the spillway gates. The lake is more than 100 miles long and holding around 29 billion tons of water.