A typical working day for senior welder Wu Huahong at the construction site of the Three Gorges Dam Power Plant, usually begins about 6 am.

After breakfast she takes the site shuttle bus at about 7:30 am and, if all goes well, her day ends around 5:30 pm.

Wu Huatong,33,has a 14-year working experience

But for the past few weeks, she and her 1,100 fellow workers from the Generator Installation Division of the 8th Hydropower Corporation, a branch of China Hydropower Corporation, have been working overtime.

She and her teammates have been making sure everything is ready for the historic moment when the dam's first batch of power generators commences operations early next month.

The corporation won the bid to manufacture and implant embedded parts for all 14 turbines on the left bank of the Three Gorges dam and the installation work and test runs for generators units 1 to 3 and 7 to 9.

Wu is a senior employee with the 53-member "Women's Brigade of Welders of the 8th Hydropower Corp," responsible for welding all the key parts of the six units.

Each of the welders in the team must have at least eight years of professional work experience and hold 12 internationally recognized certificates for hydraulic welders, explained Yang Ying, who heads the team. Over the years Yang has taken a string of top prizes at nationwide welding skills contests.

"Some of my girls hold as many as 34 technical certificates for welding professionals," Yang said proudly.

The giant generator has a working capacity of 70 MW

Victor Bertelegni, a senior turbine technical director from Canada, praised the women welders for their high-efficiency, high-quality performance and enthusiasm in what is often time-consuming and laborious work. "They have done a better job than all the male workers and engineers," he quipped.

"It is really hard work for any of us involved in this world-famous project. But we are excited about becoming part of the history," said 33-year-old Wu, who has 14 years of practical experience.

"I believe that the Three Gorges Project will help harness the roaring Yangtze River, whose floods cause a lot of deaths and damage every year in areas such as my home province of Hunan," Wu said, adding: "It will contribute to the booming Chinese economy in terms of adequate energy supply."

Two 700 megawatt generators - Units 1 and 2 - will begin operations in August, and two others in October. The project will deliver electricity to Shanghai and eight provinces in central, east and south China over the next three years.

A total of 5.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity will be produced this year by the project.

Entering the section where Units 1, 2 and 3 of the generators are installed, the slight "pulse" of the gigantic power plant can be felt. Hydraulic engineers ran all kinds of tests and checks in preparation for the 72-hour test run which signalled the first commercial operation of the Three Gorges Hydropower Plant.

The level of noise caused by the testing and installation operations on the turbines, forces people to communicate by shouting in each other's ears.

Workers and hydraulic engineers work in shifts round-the-clock, with some key engineers working 30-hour stints correcting minor faults and defects that arise from time to time in generator Unit 2 and its operation system.

"I have to admit that working for the Three Gorges Project is a tough job for me. But it is exciting and rewarding," said Nabil Mokaddem, an engineer from France.

He works alongside 20 Chinese, German and US colleagues at the Unit Control Centre, where orders and signals are sent out via a complex computer system and feedback is received and swiftly dealt with to ensure the smooth running of the Unit 2 generator.

A 72-hour test run of this generator began on June 29. After then, it will be transferred to the management of the Three Gorges Hydropower Plant where it will undergo a further month-long examination by hydraulic engineers from both sides, all designed to ensure the smooth and safe operation of this mammoth hydrogenerator.

If those preliminary runs go according to plan, the generator will begin its non-stop operations which are expected to produce 530,000 kilowatts of electricity per hour.

Production capacity will rise to 700,000 kilowatts per hour, the level it is designed to produce, two years from now when waters reach their optimum level of 175 metres, said Gong Changqing, who is in charge of carrying out the test runs on the first batch of hydropower generators of the Three Gorges Project and project manager for the installation and testing of the first batch of generators.

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