The Darunta Dam () is located on the

Kabul River The Kabul River (; ), the classical Cophen , is a river that emerges in the Sanglakh Range of the Hindu Kush mountains in the northeastern part of Maidan Wardak Province, Afghanistan. It is separated from the watershed of the Helmand River by th ...

near the village of Darunta, approximately west of

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Help:IPA/Persian, ͡ʒä.lɑː.lɑː.bɑːd̪ is the list of cities in Afghanistan, fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 200,331, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part ...

, the capital of

Nangarhar Province Nangarhār (Pashto: ; Dari: ), also called Nangrahar or Ningrahar, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country and Border, bordering Logar Province, Logar, Kabul Province, Kabul, Laghman Province, Laghm ...

in eastern

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

. It is owned and operated by the country's Ministry of Energy and Water. The

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aqua ...

hydroelectric Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies 15% of the world's electricity, almost 4,210 TWh in 2023, which is more than all other Renewable energ ...

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 electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. 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 a ...

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 armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

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 agency of the United States government that has been responsible for administering civilian United States foreign aid, foreign aid and development assistance. Established in 19 ...

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

*
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