At 11:54 in the morning on 22 December 2009, engineers detonated 2,600 tonnes of explosives packed into two galleries inside a rock promontory above the Naryn River. The mountainside came down on command, and the rubble is the dam. Kambarata-2 is not a structure built across a river so much as an artificial landslide, placed deliberately, and then tidied up.
Nobody writes about this, which is strange, because it is one of the odder pieces of engineering in Central Asia and you can state its whole method in one sentence: if you need millions of cubic metres of rock in the riverbed, and the rock is already standing next to the riverbed, dynamite is cheaper than trucks.
The facts in this post come principally from the engineering study of the dam by Hans-Balder Havenith and colleagues, published in Geoenvironmental Disasters in 2015, from the Kyrgyz power company's own records, and from trade press at the time. Dates and figures are given as those sources state them, and where they disagree, both versions are here.
What a blast-fill dam is
The idea is Soviet, and it is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of quarrying rock, hauling it and compacting it into an embankment, you find a site where a hillside stands close above the river, drill galleries into it, fill them with explosives, and drop the hill into the valley in seconds. The rubble mass becomes the body of the dam, and conventional work afterwards shapes and seals it.
It was tried more than once before Kambarata. The Medeo dam above Almaty, built by directed blasting in the 1960s, is the famous success — it caught a genuinely dangerous debris flow in 1973 and held. Baipaza in Tajikistan followed in 1968, and Ak-Su in Dagestan in 1972. Kyrgyzstan itself hosted two rehearsals on the Naryn: a test blast at Burlykia in 1975 and another at Uch-Terek in 1989, both done with an eye on the far larger Kambarata-1 project upstream, which our post on Kambarata-1 covers.
So when the 2009 blast went off, it was the late flowering of a technique the USSR had been rehearsing for decades — carried out eighteen years after the USSR itself had ended.
The explosion, and what it actually delivered
The design called for the blast to bring down about three million cubic metres of rock and leave a dam body at least 50 metres high across the Naryn.
A Bishkek newspaper ran the next day's story under the headline "Explosion of national importance," which is the kind of phrase that normally signals things went perfectly. They went adequately. The Havenith study is plain about the result: only about two thirds of the planned dam volume was achieved, and roughly 780,000 cubic metres of material had to be moved afterwards the ordinary way, with machines, to bring the embankment to its design shape.
Through 2010 and 2011 the rubble mass was finished like any embankment dam — earth fill on top, concrete and clay screens against seepage, bentonite grouting into the voids. Which points at the honest trade-off of the method: a blast gives you volume fast, but it gives you a loose, uneven mass that still needs sealing, because a pile of shattered rock is precisely the thing water loves to find a way through.
There is a detail in the study worth sitting with. Geophysical surveys of the dam in 2012 and 2013 found zones of lower electrical resistivity inside the fill — places where the material is looser or wetter than the rest. That is not a prediction of failure; it is the sort of thing instruments are for. But it is a reminder that a dam made in four seconds keeps its builders busy for years, and this one stands in one of the most seismically active valleys in the country, a subject our earthquakes guide deals with more broadly.
120 megawatts, or 360?
Both numbers circulate, and both are right, which is the kind of thing that makes people distrust everything they read about this plant. The resolution is simple.
| Figure | What it refers to |
|---|---|
| 360 MW | The design: three units of 120 MW each |
| 120 MW | What is installed and running: one unit |
The first unit went through its no-load test on 30 August 2010 and, per the power company's own record, was activated on 27 November 2010. Trade press reported the plant launched on 31 August 2010 with Acting President Roza Otunbayeva presiding, at a project cost put at $200 million. The honest compression of those dates: the first unit was launched in August 2010 and in service by late that year.
As of 2026, Kyrgyz reporting describes a second unit as being in phased commissioning. I am wording that carefully, because that is what the source says — not that a second unit is operating.
The plant matters beyond its own output because of where it sits: at the bottom end of the planned Kambarata cascade, below the much bigger unbuilt Kambarata-1. The whole cascade exists on paper to do what Toktogul cannot do alone — let Kyrgyzstan generate power in winter without draining the water its downstream neighbours need in summer. Every winter of rolling power cuts is an argument somebody makes for finishing it.
Why blow up a mountain at all
Because of where the Naryn is. The river cuts through remote country a long way from any rail line, and a conventional embankment of several million cubic metres means years of quarrying and a fleet of heavy trucks working mountain roads. The Soviet calculation — and the Kyrgyz one that inherited it — was that in terrain like this, directed blasting buys you the bulk of a dam in one morning for a fraction of the haulage.
Whether the arithmetic held at Kambarata-2 is a fair question, given that a third of the volume had to be moved mechanically anyway, plus two years of sealing work. The Havenith study treats the dam less as a triumph than as a very large, very well instrumented experiment — which, for the record, is also how an honest engineer would have described Medeo in 1966, and Medeo later stopped a debris flow that would otherwise have hit a city.
What I could not establish
The full as-built cost, as opposed to the $200 million figure reported at the 2010 launch, is not published anywhere I could find. Neither is any official statement of when, or whether, the second and third units will be completed — the cascade's financing has been an open question for years and I am not going to pretend otherwise. And the "Explosion of national importance" headline survives in the academic literature's account of the press coverage; I could not reach the original newspaper page itself.
If you drive the Bishkek–Osh road along the Naryn canyons, you pass the wider cascade's geography without signage making any of it legible. The dam you can actually see well from the road is Toktogul's. Kambarata-2 sits upstream of the reservoir, off the tourist track, doing its 120 megawatts quietly on top of a mountain that used to be taller.
FAQ
How was the Kambarata-2 dam built?
By directed blasting. On 22 December 2009, 2,600 tonnes of explosives in two galleries brought a rock promontory down into the Naryn valley, and the rubble mass became the dam body. The design called for about three million cubic metres; roughly two thirds was achieved, and about 780,000 cubic metres more had to be placed by conventional earthworks in 2010-11.
What is the capacity of Kambarata-2?
120 MW installed and operating — one unit of a three-unit, 360 MW design. The first unit was launched in August 2010 and in service by late 2010. As of 2026 a second unit is described in Kyrgyz reporting as being in phased commissioning, not yet as operating.
Had a dam been built by explosion before?
Yes, the technique is Soviet. The Medeo dam above Almaty was built by directed blasting in the 1960s and caught a major debris flow in 1973. Baipaza in Tajikistan (1968) and Ak-Su in Dagestan (1972) followed, and Kyrgyzstan ran test blasts on the Naryn at Burlykia in 1975 and Uch-Terek in 1989.
Is the Kambarata-2 dam safe?
It is monitored rather than simply trusted. Geophysical surveys in 2012-13 found zones of lower resistivity in the fill — looser or wetter patches — which is why the dam carries instrumentation, and it was sealed with concrete and clay screens and bentonite grouting after the blast. It also stands in a seismically active valley, which its engineers knew when they chose the method.
Why does Kyrgyzstan want the Kambarata cascade?
Winter power. Toktogul alone cannot generate through winter without releasing water that downstream Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan need in the summer irrigation season. Dams above Toktogul would let Kyrgyzstan burn water for electricity in winter and let Toktogul re-regulate it for the neighbours — which is why the unbuilt Kambarata-1 keeps returning to every energy negotiation.
Can you visit Kambarata-2?
It is working energy infrastructure, not a sight — there is no visitor access to speak of, and no signage frames the cascade for travellers on the Bishkek-Osh road. The dam most people actually see is Toktogul's, from the highway along the reservoir.
How much did Kambarata-2 cost?
The figure reported at the August 2010 launch was $200 million. A full as-built cost covering the completion works of 2010-11 has not been published anywhere I could find, and I am not going to guess one.
