Three Gorges Dam was quoted in the "China Youth Daily" saying that the People's Republic of China would be "seriously on guard against threats from Taiwan independence terrorists." The Three Gorges Dam is a steel-concrete gravity dam. The water is held back by the innate mass of the individual dam sections. As a result, damage to an individual section should not affect other parts of the dam. Due to the sheer size of the dam, it is expected to withstand tactical nuclear strikes. Days after the first filling of the reservoir, around 80 hairline cracks were observed in the dam's structure. The submerged
Three Gorges Dam land were flooded. The flood affected more than 2.3 million people, killing 1,526. In early August 2009, the largest flood in five years passed through the dam site. The dam limited the water flow to less than per second, raising the upstream water level from 145.13 metres on August 1, 2009, to 152.88 on August 8, 2009. 4.27 cubic kilometres of flood water were captured and the river flow was cut by as much as 15,000 cubic metres per second. The dam discharges its reservoir during the dry season between December and March every year. This increases the flow rate