London - TIN, Augusut 10 : The main section of China's premier construction project in Tibet has collapsed, an industry spokesman has confirmed. The Chinese government is planning to spend a further one billion yuan to prevent the prestige operation from being abandoned, according to other industry sources.

The tunnel at the Yamdrok Yumtso hydroelectric project, a key project in China's national five year plan for 1991-1995 which was due to double Tibet's electricity supply, is now known to have collapsed last year, involving a fall of approximately 1,000 tons of debris, said a western expert in Beijing.

"There was a major defect with the tunnel and about 1,000 cubic metres of rock fell down," said a representative of the Austrian company JM Voith, which is supplying the turbines for the project, in an interview with the US broadcasting station Voice of America. "This is a significant problem and I don't think it has been resolved yet," he added.

A second expert confirmed today that there had been serious set-backs to the project. "They have been very secretive about exactly what the problem is, but what I have been hearing is that there is leakage in the tunnel," said Dan Hooper, a senior engineer working with Voith Hydro in Pennsylvania, which is supplying the spherical valves for the project. "You should believe it is pretty significant since they have delayed the project until next year," he said, adding that the damage, probably due to design faults, had affected several of the tunnels leading to each of four turbines.

The Chinese Government has now decided to purchase steel cladding or "liners" from Japan to allow the project to go ahead, according to a separate industry source, who asked not to be named. The decision, which will mean re-excavating the damaged tunnels, means the cost of the project is expected to increase the original budget of 600 million yuan (US $79 mln at current rates) to 1.8 billion yuan (US $236 mln), said the source.

"They should have abandonned the project but this is so political that they have to continue, " said the official, who has close connections with the project.

The project, which is regarded as a figurehead for Chinese development plans in Tibet, was visited by the Chinese Party Secretary Jiang Zemin six years ago. "The construction of the station is not only an important task in terms of construction, but an important political task," said the official paper, Tibet Daily, at the time of Jiang's visit in July 1990.

Project Launch Lasts 3 Seconds -

The tunnel collapse happened in September or October last year but has been kept secret by the Chinese authorities, which this June was still describing Yamdrok as a "key project for Tibet".

No water emerged at the foot of the tunnel during the first tests of the system last year, indicating a serious fault, but officials decided to go ahead with the official launch ceremony, which was already a year behind schedule. The No.1 turbine at the site was started up by China's Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo at a ceremony in September 1995 timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region, but the turbine had to be shut down after 3 seconds to avoid it burning out, said the source.

"They had a public relations operation", confirmed Mr Hooper. "They met their commitments by running the first unit for a very short time." Several sources reported that there was also a power failure shortly before the ceremony, requiring engineers to rig up an emergency power supply to allow the launch to go ahead.

The 1996 work report of Tibet's regional Government avoids any mention of the Yamdrok project, but emphasises quality problems and difficulties with management on hydro-electric projects. "It is imperative to ensure quality and the progress of construction and to ensure that the projects will be completed and put into operation according to plan," said the statement, published in the Tibet Daily on 5th June.

The Ninth Five Year Plan, which begins this year, says that "stress will be put on the construction of the Yanghu pumped-storage power station" but indicates that the key power project in future plans will be a little known station to be built at Drigung, about 100 km north-east of Lhasa, in what may be an effort to compensate for the difficulties at Yamdrok.

"Particular efforts should be made to build the Zhikong hydropower station as the key to fulfilling the region's installed-capacity target before the year 2000," says the plan, published in the Tibet Daily on 7th June.

Unofficial sources in Lhasa have been reporting that the launch ceremony was a failure for six months, but have only now been confirmed. "At the celebration to mark the completion of the main project the machines failed to produce electricity and it was an insult and a humiliation for the officials," said one Tibetan in Lhasa last April, who asked not to be named.

"Now nothing can be heard about it, and the project has disappeared like a rainbow," said the Tibetan, who attributed the failure to corruption among officials.

The Yamdrok hydro-electric project, a "pump-storage" system which has involved drilling 5,889 metres - about 3.5 miles - of tunnels to get water to drop from Yamdrok Yumtso, a lake about 100 km south west of Lhasa, down to the Yarlung Tsangpo river, also known as the Brahmaputra, 840 metres below. The water is meant to fall down the 3.5 metre wide tunnels to drive four Austrian-made turbines, which have a total installed capacity of 90 megawatts. The project is planned to produce an annual yield of 200 million kilowatt hours by the time all four turbines are in operation, originally scheduled for the year 2000.

The project is presumably intended to provide a basis for industrialising the economy in Lhasa, which at present has a power cut at least every third day - there was no power in the centre of Lhasa for a large part of 49 out of 167 days this year, according to residents. Critics say the plans will encourage Chinese settlement in the area, and the European Community refused to fund hydro-electric projects in the area to avoid encouraging inward migration.

The project has attracted controversy within Tibet and was suspended for four years from 1985 because of objections by the 10th Panchen Lama, the leading Tibetan dignitary inside Tibet, who suspected that the gradual draining of the lake, which covers 635 sq. km., would cause irreparable environmental damage. The project was resumed after his death in 1989 when the Chinese authorities promised that water would be pumped back up to the lake during off-peak periods, but in August last year a number of foreign engineers working on the project were reported to have said that plans to pump the water uphill were not going to be implemented.

In June this year the Washington-based advocacy group, the International Campaign for Tibet, reported that an inquiry had been held into the tunnel leaks after the launch ceremony, leading to the dismissal of the head of the project, General Fang Changquan. Other sources say that Ms. Fang, commander of the Third Detachment of the People's Armed Police Hydroelectric Power Unit, which is carrying out the construction at Yamdrok, has not yet been formally dismissed but is on sick leave in Beijing.

"We should strengthen the management of the existing power stations and the training of their personnel in order to improve their overall quality, to maintain safety and to operate at full capacity," said a statement given by the Tibet Governor, Gyaltsen Norbu, in the annual work report, printed on 5th June, according to the BBC Monitoring Service, in what may be a reference to General Fang's failure at Yamdrok.

Some Tibetan sources in Lhasa say that a number of Chinese workers have died in accidents at the project site, including 3 unit leaders, but the reports are unconfirmed.