Churchill Falls Generating Station

The Churchill Falls Generating Station is a hydroelectric underground power station in Labrador, Canada. At 5,428 MW, it is the sixteenth largest in the world, and the second-largest in Canada, after the Robert-Bourassa generating station in northwestern Quebec.

Rather than a single large dam, the plant's reservoir is contained by 88 dikes, totalling 64 km in length. The Smallwood Reservoir has a capacity of 33 cubic kilometres in a catchment area of about 72,000 square kilometres, an area larger than the Republic of Ireland. It drops over 305 metres to the site of the plant's 11 turbines.

The plant's power house was hewn from solid granite 300 metres underground. It is about 300 metres long and as high as a 15-story building.

The station cost almost a billion Canadian dollars to build in 1970. Commissioned from 1971 to 1974, it is owned and operated by the Churchill Falls Labrador Corporation Limited, a joint venture between Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro (65.8%) and Hydro-Québec (34.2%). Workers at the station live in the purpose-built company town of Churchill Falls.

Originally called the Mishta-shipu (Big River) by the Innu, in 1821 the river was called Hamilton by Captain William Martin of HMS Clinker, after Sir Charles Hamilton the governor of Newfoundland from 1818 to 1823. The waterfall itself was called Grand Falls. In 1965, after the death of Winston Churchill the falls, river, town, and generating station were all renamed again.

In 1915, Wilfred Thibaudeau surveyed the Labrador Plateau. He designed a channel scheme to divert water before it arrived at the falls. The scheme would use the natural capacity of the drainage basin, which covers over 23,300 mi² (60,000 km²), eliminating the need for the construction of dams. The advantage of the site was the river's drop of more than 300 metres in less than 32 km, and steady supply of water. These findings were confirmed in a 1947 survey, but development did not proceed due to the remoteness of the site and the distance from markets for the power.

In 1954, the region was opened up by the completion of the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway which runs north from Sept-Îles, Quebec 575 km north through Labrador to Schefferville, Quebec. In 1963, a 225 MW generating station was built at Twin Falls to supply power to iron mining industries in western Labrador.

Canada is a federation where legal authority is split between the federal and provincial governments; natural resources such as lumber, petroleum, and inland waterways are under the jurisdiction of provincial, rather than the federal government. Since Labrador had no internal market for the power, the Government of Newfoundland had to negotiate with neighbouring Quebec to export the energy. Controversy over the location of the international border on the Labrador Peninsula added to the difficulties of negotiating between Newfoundland and Quebec. A country at the time, Newfoundland disputed the border location with the Government of Canada. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the United Kingdom ruled in favour of the Dominion of Newfoundland in 1927, an unpopular judgment in Quebec. A member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec, Jacques Dumoulin, stated that for Canada the best judges are Canadians. The Quebec government did not accept this judgement as seen by borders on maps issued in 1939 by the Quebec Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. Certain newspapers called for a takeover of the territory.