Over 1 million ships pass through Three Gorge Dam in last two decades

A total of 1 million ships have passed through the Three Gorges Dam since it opened to traffic in June 2003, the Three Gorges Navigation Authority said on Tuesday.

The total cargo throughput via the ship locks exceeded the accumulative amount of 1.936 billion tonnes in the past two decades.

It has significantly boosted the transportation efficiency on the river, providing robust support for the safe and smooth navigation of the Yangtze River.

The Three Gorges ship locks operated 23.13 times daily on average in the beginning phase of the operation and have increased an average of 31 times per day nowadays. Its reliability to pass through the dam hit 93.95 percent, over 10 percent higher than the designed target, which means the dam could operate for about 900 more hours per year than expected.

The Three Gorges project is a multi-functional water-control system consisting of a 2,309-meter-long and 185-meter-high dam, five-tier ship locks on the north and south sides, and 34 turbo-generators with a combined generating capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts.