The Darunta Dam ( ps, درونټه برېښناکوټ) is located on the Kabul River near

Darunta Darūnṭa ( ps, درونټه) (or Khayrow Khel), also spelled Daruntah or Derunta, is a village in Jalalabad District of Nangarhar province. It is located next to Jalalabad city on route AO1 in Afghanistan. Numerous remains of stupas from the 1 ...

, approximately west of

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...

, the capital of Nangarhar Province in eastern

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...

. It is owned and operated by the country's

Ministry of Energy and Water ps, د افغانستان د انرژۍ او اوبو وزارت) , nativename_a = , nativename_r = , logo = Emblem of Ministry of Energy and Water (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan).png , logo_width = 200px , logo_c ...

. The dam's

hydroelectric Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined an ...

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many ...

is being rehabilitated at a cost of $10.5 million.

History

Darunta Dam was built in the early 1960s under the supervision of engineers from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. Its power station contains three vertical

Kaplan turbine The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to ach ...

s (six-blade propeller) with a rated output of each. Originally, the dam supplied of electrical power but silting and damage to the system during the decades of

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

has reduced its actual output to . In 2011, an American company by the name of ANHAM was contracted by

USAID The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...

to perform the initial rehabilitation of the Darunta power plant. Later, the USAID abandoned the repair work due to Gul Agha Sherzai not paying 10% of the project's $11 million total cost. Sherzai was Nangarhar's governor at the time.

References

External links

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Darunta Hydroelectric Power Plant Rehabilitation
{{Nangarhar Province Dams in Afghanistan Buildings and structures in Nangarhar Province Hydroelectric power stations in Afghanistan Afghanistan–Soviet Union relations Dams completed in 1964 Dams on the Kabul River Soviet foreign aid 1964 establishments in Afghanistan

History

See also

References

External links