Friedrich Bassler
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Bassler was born on 21 June 1909 in Karlsruhe
and died on 7 September 1992 in Freiburg im Breisgau. He was a German
hydraulic engineer
.
From 1961 to 1977 he was director of the Institut für Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft (Department of water engineering and management) at the Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt. From 1964 till 1973 Bassler helped to develop the hydro-solar energy project at the Qattara Depression further. He directed the "Board of Advisers" which was responsible for the planning and financing of the project. For the Egyptian government he served as an advisor on the project.
forefathers paternaly. His mothers family however originated from the Neumark
(now in Poland). His father, Fritz Bassler, was employee with the local newspaper while his mother being the housewife.
In World War 2 he conscripted into the Wehrmacht
and was stationed in Egypt in 1941 and 1942. During the German North Africa Campaign he served as an Luftwaffe
officer under Rommel
in the Libyan Desert
near the Qattara Depression
. He sustained a war injury and was captured as a prisoner of war by the Americans.
He returned to Karlsruhe in 1947, where he became the founder of an engineering company and started working for Schluchseewerk AG at Freiburg. For twelve years he was in charge of planning activities and oversaw construction of tunnels and powerplants. Simultaneously he took up the position of Operating Director of a three-stage pumped-storage hydroelectricity
plant in the Black Forest
. In this Freiburg period he also got married with his Janine in 1951 and his two children, Michael (1952) and Sibylle (1957), were born.
for two semesters Electrical Engineering, before switching to Civil Engineering. After the 1932 exams he became a research fellow. The following traineeship he completed successfully in late 1936.
Afterwards a water management exploration expedition brought him to Liberia
. In 1956 he got his doctorate at the 'Technischen Universität Berlin' with his dissertation on „Gesichtspunkte bei der Wahl einer Talsperren-Bauart“ or "Considerations when choosing a dam design".
In 1961 he became a professor at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, as holder of the then new chair he became director of the "Institut für Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft". From 1964 onward he committed himself to the "Qattara Project" in Egypt. In 1966 he founded the scientific journal "Darmstädter Wasserbau-Mitteilungen" or shortly "Wasserbau-Mitteilungen". Apart from that he was chairman of the planning committee from 1967 till 1971 of which he was a member for six years.
Besides his activities for the university and his numerous publications and consults, he assumed various offices at research and industrial institutes, e.g. at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
. Guest lectureships took him a.o. to Berlin, Madras, Alexandria und Cairo
. Additionally he worked on regional models and water management of water-rich and water-poor countries such as Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, India, Saudi-Arabia and Egypt. For the OECD and the European Communities
he produced studies on the reserves and future needs of water.
In 1977 he retired as Professor emeritus. However he still kept working as a consultant.
This project envisaged bringing water from the Mediterranean Sea
near El Alamein
into the Qattara Depression
to generate hydroelectricity
. The power plant was to have more output than the Aswan High Dam. Bassler led from 1964 onward the international "Board of Advisers" which was responsible for planning and financing activities of the project. He also advised the Egyptian government on the matter from 1975 onward.
He was appointed to make a first preliminary feasibility study by the German Federal Ministry of Economics
in Bonn.
Bassler was the driving force behind the Qattara Project for nearly a decade. Half way through the seventies a team of eight mostly German scientists and technicians was working on the planning of the first hydro-solar depression power station in the world. The first "Bassler-study" of 1973 laid the basis for the Egyptian government to commission a study of it own. It decided in 1975 that Bassler and a group of companies known as "Joint Venture Qattara" should conduct a feasibility study of the project.
The project concept was: Mediterranean water should be channelled through a canal or tunnel towards the Qattara Depression
which lies below sea level. This water would then fall into the depression through penstock
s for electricity generation. The water would evaporate quickly because of the very dry and hot weather once in the depression. This would allow for more water to enter the depression and would create a continuous source of electricity.
A canal of 60 meters deep would connect the Mediterranean with the depressions edge at this narrow isthmus. This canal would deliver water to the depression as well as being a shipping route towards the Qattara lake with a harbour and fishing grounds in the depression. The depression was to be filled to a height of 60 m below sealevel. It would take a total of 10 years to fill to that level. After that the incoming flow would balance out against the outgoing evaporation and would the lake level stop changing.
In the first phase of the project the Qattara 1 station was to generate 670 Megawatt. The second phase was to generate an additional 1.200 Megawatt. A pumped-storage hydroelectricity
facility would increase the peak production capacity with another 4.000 Megawatts, totalling about 6.800 Megawatts.
Core problem of the entire project was the water supply to the depression. Calculations showed that digging a canal or tunnel would be to expensive. Bassler decided to use peaceful nuclear explosions
to excavate the canal. Exactly 213 boreholes would each have a nuclear explosive charge of 1,5 Megatons. Everyone of these bombs would have a explosive yield fifty times that of the atomic bomb of Hiroshima
.
Evacuation
plans cited numbers of at least 25.000 evacuees. Further problems arose with the tectonicly unstable Red Sea Rift
located just 450km away from the blast site on which the shockwaves of the explosions would not have remained without result. Also salinization or outright contamination of groundwater had to be counted among the problems because the salt water Qattara sea. This groundwater is vital to the oases of Bahariya
and Siwa
.
Another danger was increased coast erosion
because sea currents could change in such a way that even very remote coast started to erode. Also a massive demining operation would have to be executed to remove millions of mines and UXOs left from the Second World War.
All this convinced the stakeholders of the project to give up the project especially as the atomic dug canal-idea had to be abandoned because of ecological reasons.
Present day scientists still explore the viability such a project, as a key to resolving economic, population, and ecological stresses in the area. However interest in the project has waned and as of 2011 has not been undertaken.
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
and died on 7 September 1992 in Freiburg im Breisgau. He was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
hydraulic engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
.
From 1961 to 1977 he was director of the Institut für Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft (Department of water engineering and management) at the Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt. From 1964 till 1973 Bassler helped to develop the hydro-solar energy project at the Qattara Depression further. He directed the "Board of Advisers" which was responsible for the planning and financing of the project. For the Egyptian government he served as an advisor on the project.
Life
Friedrich Bassler descended from Alemannic-SwissAlemannic German
Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. It is spoken by approximately ten million people in six countries: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France and Italy...
forefathers paternaly. His mothers family however originated from the Neumark
Neumark
Neumark comprised a region of the Prussian province of Brandenburg, Germany.Neumark may also refer to:* Neumark, Thuringia* Neumark, Saxony* Neumark * Nowe Miasto Lubawskie or Neumark, a town in Poland, situated at river Drwęca...
(now in Poland). His father, Fritz Bassler, was employee with the local newspaper while his mother being the housewife.
In World War 2 he conscripted into the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
and was stationed in Egypt in 1941 and 1942. During the German North Africa Campaign he served as an Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
officer under Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
in the Libyan Desert
Libyan Desert
The Libyan Desert covers an area of approximately 1,100,000 km2, it extends approximately 1100 km from east to west, and 1,000 km from north to south, in about the shape of a rectangle...
near the Qattara Depression
Qattara Depression
The Qattara Depression is a depression in the north west of Egypt in the Matruh Governorate and is part of the Libyan Desert. It lies below sea level and is covered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes. The region extends between latitudes of 28°35' and 30°25' North and longitudes of 26°20'...
. He sustained a war injury and was captured as a prisoner of war by the Americans.
He returned to Karlsruhe in 1947, where he became the founder of an engineering company and started working for Schluchseewerk AG at Freiburg. For twelve years he was in charge of planning activities and oversaw construction of tunnels and powerplants. Simultaneously he took up the position of Operating Director of a three-stage pumped-storage hydroelectricity
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is a type of hydroelectric power generation used by some power plants for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost off-peak electric power is used to run the pumps...
plant in the Black Forest
Black Forest
The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....
. In this Freiburg period he also got married with his Janine in 1951 and his two children, Michael (1952) and Sibylle (1957), were born.
Academic Career
From 1927 he studied at the Technischen Hochschule KarlsruheKarlsruhe Institute of Technology
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is a German academic research and education institution with university status resulting from a merger of the university and the research center of the city of Karlsruhe. The university, also known as Fridericiana, was founded in 1825...
for two semesters Electrical Engineering, before switching to Civil Engineering. After the 1932 exams he became a research fellow. The following traineeship he completed successfully in late 1936.
Afterwards a water management exploration expedition brought him to Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
. In 1956 he got his doctorate at the 'Technischen Universität Berlin' with his dissertation on „Gesichtspunkte bei der Wahl einer Talsperren-Bauart“ or "Considerations when choosing a dam design".
In 1961 he became a professor at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, as holder of the then new chair he became director of the "Institut für Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft". From 1964 onward he committed himself to the "Qattara Project" in Egypt. In 1966 he founded the scientific journal "Darmstädter Wasserbau-Mitteilungen" or shortly "Wasserbau-Mitteilungen". Apart from that he was chairman of the planning committee from 1967 till 1971 of which he was a member for six years.
Besides his activities for the university and his numerous publications and consults, he assumed various offices at research and industrial institutes, e.g. at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is an important German research funding organization and the largest such organization in Europe.-Function:...
. Guest lectureships took him a.o. to Berlin, Madras, Alexandria und Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
. Additionally he worked on regional models and water management of water-rich and water-poor countries such as Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, India, Saudi-Arabia and Egypt. For the OECD and the European Communities
European Communities
The European Communities were three international organisations that were governed by the same set of institutions...
he produced studies on the reserves and future needs of water.
In 1977 he retired as Professor emeritus. However he still kept working as a consultant.
Qattara Depression Project
- Main article: Qattara Depression
This project envisaged bringing water from the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
near El Alamein
El Alamein
El Alamein is a town in the northern Matrouh Governorate of Egypt. Located on the Mediterranean Sea, it lies west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. As of 2007, it has a local population of 7,397 inhabitants.- Climate :...
into the Qattara Depression
Qattara Depression
The Qattara Depression is a depression in the north west of Egypt in the Matruh Governorate and is part of the Libyan Desert. It lies below sea level and is covered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes. The region extends between latitudes of 28°35' and 30°25' North and longitudes of 26°20'...
to generate hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity is the term referring to electricity generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy...
. The power plant was to have more output than the Aswan High Dam. Bassler led from 1964 onward the international "Board of Advisers" which was responsible for planning and financing activities of the project. He also advised the Egyptian government on the matter from 1975 onward.
He was appointed to make a first preliminary feasibility study by the German Federal Ministry of Economics
Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is a ministry of the German Federal Government since 1998...
in Bonn.
Bassler was the driving force behind the Qattara Project for nearly a decade. Half way through the seventies a team of eight mostly German scientists and technicians was working on the planning of the first hydro-solar depression power station in the world. The first "Bassler-study" of 1973 laid the basis for the Egyptian government to commission a study of it own. It decided in 1975 that Bassler and a group of companies known as "Joint Venture Qattara" should conduct a feasibility study of the project.
The project concept was: Mediterranean water should be channelled through a canal or tunnel towards the Qattara Depression
Qattara Depression
The Qattara Depression is a depression in the north west of Egypt in the Matruh Governorate and is part of the Libyan Desert. It lies below sea level and is covered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes. The region extends between latitudes of 28°35' and 30°25' North and longitudes of 26°20'...
which lies below sea level. This water would then fall into the depression through penstock
Penstock
A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydraulic turbines and sewerage systems. It is a term that has been inherited from the technology of wooden watermills....
s for electricity generation. The water would evaporate quickly because of the very dry and hot weather once in the depression. This would allow for more water to enter the depression and would create a continuous source of electricity.
A canal of 60 meters deep would connect the Mediterranean with the depressions edge at this narrow isthmus. This canal would deliver water to the depression as well as being a shipping route towards the Qattara lake with a harbour and fishing grounds in the depression. The depression was to be filled to a height of 60 m below sealevel. It would take a total of 10 years to fill to that level. After that the incoming flow would balance out against the outgoing evaporation and would the lake level stop changing.
In the first phase of the project the Qattara 1 station was to generate 670 Megawatt. The second phase was to generate an additional 1.200 Megawatt. A pumped-storage hydroelectricity
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is a type of hydroelectric power generation used by some power plants for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost off-peak electric power is used to run the pumps...
facility would increase the peak production capacity with another 4.000 Megawatts, totalling about 6.800 Megawatts.
Core problem of the entire project was the water supply to the depression. Calculations showed that digging a canal or tunnel would be to expensive. Bassler decided to use peaceful nuclear explosions
Peaceful nuclear explosions
Peaceful nuclear explosions are nuclear explosions conducted for non-military purposes, such as activities related to economic development including the creation of canals...
to excavate the canal. Exactly 213 boreholes would each have a nuclear explosive charge of 1,5 Megatons. Everyone of these bombs would have a explosive yield fifty times that of the atomic bomb of Hiroshima
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
.
Evacuation
Evacuation
Evacuation may refer to:* Casualty evacuation , patient evacuation in combat situations* Casualty movement, the procedure for moving a casualty from its initial location to an ambulance...
plans cited numbers of at least 25.000 evacuees. Further problems arose with the tectonicly unstable Red Sea Rift
Red Sea Rift
The Red Sea Rift is a spreading center between two tectonic plates, the African Plate and the Arabian Plate. It extends down the length of the Red Sea, stretching from the southern end of the Dead Sea Transform to a triple junction with the Aden Ridge and the East African Rift in the Afar...
located just 450km away from the blast site on which the shockwaves of the explosions would not have remained without result. Also salinization or outright contamination of groundwater had to be counted among the problems because the salt water Qattara sea. This groundwater is vital to the oases of Bahariya
Bahariya Oasis
El-Wahat el-Bahariya or el-Bahariya is a depression in Egypt. It is approximately 360 km away from Cairo. Located in Giza Governorate, the main economic sectors are agriculture, iron ore mining, and tourism...
and Siwa
Siwa Oasis
The Siwa Oasis is an oasis in Egypt, located between the Qattara Depression and the Egyptian Sand Sea in the Libyan Desert, nearly 50 km east of the Libyan border, and 560 km from Cairo....
.
Another danger was increased coast erosion
Coastal erosion
Coastal erosion is the wearing away of land and the removal of beach or dune sediments by wave action, tidal currents, wave currents, or drainage...
because sea currents could change in such a way that even very remote coast started to erode. Also a massive demining operation would have to be executed to remove millions of mines and UXOs left from the Second World War.
All this convinced the stakeholders of the project to give up the project especially as the atomic dug canal-idea had to be abandoned because of ecological reasons.
Present day scientists still explore the viability such a project, as a key to resolving economic, population, and ecological stresses in the area. However interest in the project has waned and as of 2011 has not been undertaken.
Further reading
- Roland Börner: Friedrich Bassler 70 Jahre: Ansprachen und Aufsätze zu seiner Emeritierung. Institut für Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft, Darmstadt 1979
Publications
- Die Energiequellen Fluss- und Meerwasser. Institut für Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft der Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt, 1977
- „Wasserbaumitteilungen der TH Darmstadt“ 1966–1979
External links
- Mascolo Antonio: Die Kattara-Utopie (PDF; 926 kB) 2005