"Your Excellency, according to the exhaustive surveys of geologists and hydraulics, these mountains you have seen are geologically stable basalt areas, and these rock formations formed by volcanic eruptions hundreds of millions of years ago are the most ideal structures for large reservoir basins.

The Songjiang area has many mountain water systems and extremely abundant precipitation, which has the natural conditions for the formation of a super-large reservoir, and it only takes two years to reach the design elevation of the reservoir by impounding the floodwater.

The drop conditions of this mountain range are very good, from the foot of the mountain where we are now standing to the depths of the mountain range, the reservoir can be extended more than 80 miles away, like an umbrella in all directions, the huge pressure is evenly distributed to the reservoir basin bottom structure, without forming excessive pressure on the earth's crust.

A comprehensive examination can lead to conclusions;

This is an excellent dam site for the creation of a mega-reservoir, ranking among the top three in the whole of Australia, which is an assumption made in the Great Dividing Range that we have not explored more, and represents the optimistic view of our expert group. ”

Feuerbach-Kant's enthusiastic explanation aroused Li Fushou's great interest, and he carefully observed and asked;

"I see that the surface of this dam site is relatively wide, and the visual distance is more than 1,200 meters to 1,500 meters, which is more than three times wider than the dam site of the Red River Valley Reservoir, so I am afraid that the amount of work will not be small, right?"

"That's true."

Feuerbach Kant took out the drawings he carried with him, on which a large amount of data had been written densely, and Li Fushou did not need to look at these specific technical indicators, naturally there were experts who repeatedly demonstrated, he just needed to listen to the introduction of technology.

Feuerbach-Kant looked among the drawings, drew one of them, looked at it, and said; "The one-mile-36-foot-long Songjiang Reservoir Dam, nestled between two large mountains, will cut off the rushing river beneath its feet and create a safe working face.

Due to its location deep in the mountains, the reservoir project has to pass through the Hongze Lake wetlands along the way, so the reservoir project must open a separate road for some heavy equipment to enter the construction site.

We plan to use the latest reinforced concrete technology, which is the French engineer Kvahan first proposed the idea of adding steel bars to Portland cement, that is, to make full use of the advantages of high tensile strength of steel bars and the advantages of high hardness of cement.

In 1861, Kwahan applied reinforced concrete technology to the construction of large stadiums, and the results were extremely exciting.

After nearly 20 years of practical application, reinforced concrete technology has been widely used in super-large projects, including reservoirs, bridges, culverts, high-rise buildings and overpasses, and has achieved remarkable excellent performance.

Therefore, in the design of Songjiang Reservoir, I boldly used the reinforced concrete structure reverse arch dam design, which has very good resistance and dispersed load-bearing structure, compared with the gravity dam body, the amount of earthwork is greatly reduced, specifically reduced by 64.2%, which is an innovative design scheme. ”

At this, Feuerbach Kant cocked his beard proudly and continued; "I once mailed this design to the famous professor of the Imperial University of Munich, Mr. Pope, and after his detailed arguments, it was highly praised as an innovative and outstanding design."

Li Fushou said with a wry smile; "Although the amount of earthwork has been reduced, the cost has increased significantly."

"Uh...... I admit that what you say is true. Feuerbach-Kant couldn't help but argue; A good design must be realized by the builders, and the only way to do this ambitious project is to use reinforced concrete technology to ensure the quality of the reservoir. ”

"Yes, the reservoir project is a 100-year project, and this is the price that must be paid." Li Fushou muttered a retelling, looking at the magnificent scenery in front of him as if intoxicated.

Is this mega-reservoir going to be built?

Will the abundant hydropower generation be wasted?

Is there an urgent need for such a large-scale infrastructure plan, and will the funds keep up?

This one has not had a large-scale water conservancy facility in Australia's history, should it be more carefully demonstrated?

The answer is simple; It has to be built.

In the history of Australia, there has never been a Red River Valley city in the southwest of Brisbane, let alone the four cities of Qinglong, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird and Xuanwu, and Christchurchtown, what is the reason?

The population is too small for Brisbane to develop satellite cities in the surrounding areas, and Brisbane alone is enough.

Today's situation is completely different, Li Fushou has brought great changes to the whole of Queensland and quietly affected the entire Australian continent.

Until October 1879

There are more than 380,000 Chinese immigrants in the original history, and they need cities and towns to carry, develop and live and work in peace and contentment, which is the historical inevitability of the rise of Red River Valley City in the central part of the country.

It's not that Australia can't develop other cities, but because of the limited population size, it's a vast and sparsely populated area, and there is no need to develop too many important cities.

In Li Fushou's plan, Queensland will gradually introduce more than one million people, which can be completed in less than three years at the current rate.

Such a large number of people must be diverted from large and medium-sized towns, and cannot be thrown into pastures to engage in simple agricultural and animal husbandry production.

Songjiang is an important node city for industrial development, the city is located 150 miles south of the city of the Red River Valley and about 140 miles from the southernmost town of Songshu.

It's 370 miles from Sydney, almost in the heart of the city.

As an important node city connecting the Red River Valley and Brisbane Twin Cities to Sydney, Songjiang Town has extremely advantageous geographical conditions, with a vast water surface along Taihu Lake, from Taihu Lake to the southeast into the Huangpu River to the Tasman Sea, and overlooking New Zealand across the sea.

The Huangpu River has a wide water surface and a deep channel, and the preliminary survey has the natural conditions for the passage of more than 20,000 tons of cargo ships, all of which have the conditions for the development of an important industrial city.

As a superior

Li Fushou could not have fixed his eyes on the small territory of the Red River Valley, and if he wanted to continue to expand his power, the town of Songjiang in New South Wales was the best place to start.

Once a large-scale town is formed, it will definitely form a strong absorption effect on the surrounding towns, and talents, funds and resources will be brought together to accelerate the rapid development and formation of Songjiang Town.

This is a consideration on the one hand, and a consideration on the other hand, being prepared for danger in times of peace.

Don't look at the development of Red River Valley City in full swing now, in fact, it has developed to a bottleneck, and we must find a new way out.

Today, the world's hydropower equipment is still backward, and the power supply of the Red River Valley reservoir to its subordinate enterprises has been insufficient, which is the biggest hidden danger today.

The development of the Hongshan coking coal plant to the seventh production line came to an abrupt end, and it was precisely because of the lack of power supply that the rapid development had to be stopped.

After the third set of imported advanced steelmaking equipment was launched at Hongshan Iron and Steel Plant, the same power demand is also a big problem, the heavy-duty cranes running in the steel plant, rolling and continuous casting equipment, large steam forging hammers and hydraulic presses and other equipment all need to use a lot of electricity, and the next step can only be adjusted through staggered peak production to adjust the contradiction between supply and demand.

The Hongshan Reservoir is nearby, and several small reservoirs have been built to find a suitable site, but unfortunately there is still not enough power generation needed, and this is the problem.

In today's world, small thermal power equipment is expensive, high and uneconomical, and the products produced by using small thermal power are not competitive in the world, and the cost performance has dropped sharply.

Take coking coal, which consumes the most electricity, for example;

The cost of producing coking coal in Germany is 12 shillings and 3 pence per tonne, which is equivalent to almost 7.9 US dollars, plus 2.2 US dollars for high-quality coal resources, 4 US dollars a ton for ocean transportation, and 1.3 US dollars a ton for other miscellaneous taxes and fees, including port fees, for a total cost of 15.4 US dollars, plus the profits of producers and distributors, it is as high as 22 US dollars a ton in the hands of end users.

This level of profit is not a windfall profit, and it is only slightly higher than the normal level.

The high-quality coking coal produced in the Red River Valley costs the same as German exports, with the biggest advantage being the cost of hydropower and coal.

It only costs $0.34 to mine a ton of coal, plus the rest of the cost is no more than $0.4, except for the necessary profits from the coal mine, everything else goes into Li Fushou's pocket.

The same is true for hydropower, which costs less than US$1 to produce a ton of coking coal, and all the huge profits that come out of it are withheld and end up flowing into Li Fushou's pocket.

The huge cost advantage makes the high-quality resources produced in the Red River Valley dare to compete with anyone.

Even if it drops to 17~18 US dollars a ton, it can still make a lot of money.

The cost gap between hydropower and small thermal power is the key to price competitiveness.

It's a bit like the very low cost of oil extraction in Saudi Arabia in later generations, and the high cost of oil extraction in Tsarist Russia.

In the world's coal resources, not all coal can produce coking coal, according to the advantages and disadvantages of coal resources is about 10% ~ 25%, Australia's proportion can reach 36%, which is extremely high.

There are many kinds of coking coal, bituminous coal includes gas coal, fertile coal, gas fertilizer coal, coking coal, lean coal and lean coal, etc., the best of which is coking raw coal, with Australia's high-quality coal resources of almost 4 tons, can produce a ton of high-quality coking coal, in the international market can be sold at a high price of 22 US dollars a ton.

This kind of high-quality coal only accounts for 3%~5% of coal resources, which is the fundamental reason why high-quality coking coal is extremely scarce.

In comparison, the steel plate exported by Hongshan Iron and Steel Plant is only US$23.5 a tonne, which shows the high price of coking raw coal.

It is undoubtedly painful to have a large amount of wealth that cannot be realized due to the bottleneck of hydropower resources.

Standing in Li Fushou's position, he can comprehensively control the overall situation and see the necessity and urgency of the development of Songjiang, so as the source of power to drive the development of the entire Songjiang Town, the construction of Songjiang Reservoir is imperative.

It will take almost three years from the demonstration to the final commissioning, that is, around the end of 1882, when the whole of Queensland will have a population of one million, and the contradiction between supply and demand of resources will become more prominent, especially electricity.

Those who do not seek the overall situation are not enough to seek a domain.