Chinese Scientists Warn That World Largest Super Dam Sits on Dangerous Earthquake Fault Line Near India

A scientific study conducted by Chinese geologists has raised serious alarm over the construction of the world's largest hydropower project on the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet. The research, published in the peer-reviewed Chinese journal Sedimentary Geology and Tethyan Geology by scientists from the state-run China Geological Survey and Chengdu University of Technology, revealed that the massive Medog dam is being built directly over the active Paizhen Fault line. The study warns that this geological crack in the earth makes the entire foundation vulnerable to violent earthquakes, massive landslides, and structural failure.

The gigantic Medog Hydropower Project carries an estimated construction cost of nearly 168 billion dollars and is designed to generate 60,000 megawatts of electricity, which is three times the capacity of China's Three Gorges Dam. Located barely 50 kilometres from the Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh, the project involves drilling massive 20-kilometre tunnels to divert the river through the world's deepest gorge. However, the scientists found that continuous tectonic movement has already fractured and weakened the local rock, leaving the mountain slopes dangerously loose and unfit to hold the weight of such an enormous reservoir.

The research notes that the region sits right where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates constantly collide, leading to frequent and destructive tremors like the 6.9 magnitude earthquake recorded in 2017. When huge volumes of water fill the reservoir, the increased underground water pressure and heavy soil saturation could trigger sudden mountain collapses, threatening the mega-dam and its surrounding infrastructure.

This geological danger has caused major worry for people living downstream. Because the Yarlung Tsangpo enters India as the Brahmaputra before flowing into Bangladesh as the Jamuna, any sudden dam burst or flash flood in this quake-prone belt would unleash an unstoppable wall of water. Environmentalists and defence experts have described the project as a man-made geological time bomb, warning that an engineering failure would wash away millions of lives and cause widespread destruction across Northeast India and Bangladesh.