The Chirkeiskaya hydro-electric power plant is located on the
Sulak river (15km upstream from the Miatlinskaya hydro-electric
power plant) in Dagestan. It is the largest power plant in the
North Caucasus and the highest arch dam in Russia. The Sulak
river, the dam of the Miatlinskaya hydro-electric power plant
and its reservoir. The Chirkeiskaya hydro-electric power plant
has been built in the gorge 200m deep (the width of the gorge in
its lower part is 15m, in the upper one – 300m). The conditions
of the construction were rather hard due to the uneven relief.
The construction works were started in 1966. During the
construction of the power plant, for the first time in the USSR,
there was widely applied a blasting by presplitting method.
Grade 8 earthquake in 1970 became a serious interruption of the
building work and it was suspended nearly for a half of a year.
Thanks to a high scale of the building mechanization there was
achieved the highest efficiency of that time – 12 m3 per 1. The
Chirkeiskaya hydro-el