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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Doublecheck, Brian over there and Gerri's here to somewhere not just in spirit, but like digitally virtually. She's like Johnny Depp in, uh, um, Johnny Mnemonic. No, Keanu.

Oh, Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes.

It's a Jeri's like I've been singing Judas Priest all day because of this. Instead of Turbo Lover, I'm singing hydropower.

Oh, that's pretty cool, man.

Can you give us a little a couple of verses I your hydro power.

Mm hmm. Well, failed to mention I'm wearing my leathers. OK, just a leather vest and no shirt underneath.

Yeah. And then nothing else but boots and butlers chaps.

Some really are there any, is there any need to make any other kind of chaps. I mean, I think they usually don't have about right, you're just expected to wear something underneath. Maybe that's what it is, but then the whole thing just calling them gutless chaps is superfluous. Yeah, it's redundant, right? Yeah.

So since we started talking about bootless chaps, since we coined a new term, but less chaps, I think we're the first people to ever use those two words together.

Yeah. People usually say that a word, right.

Exactly. We're clearly talking about hydro power, not just hydro electric power grids, hydro power. There's a lot of energy and that there water. And we humans have have gotten pretty clever at figuring out how to extract it. Yeah. And this is something that we used to use a lot more of in this country up until about the mid 20th century. We were using lots of hydropower and it peaked in about 1960. Yeah. Now we're down to just about six percent of our power being created through the use of water.

But there's still a lot of, you know, hydropower plants in the US, about twenty four hundred. The US has a bunch, but we're also tearing them down along with Europe at a rate of about like one per week, these dams, right? Yeah, yeah.

And we're tearing we're removing dams, demolishing them faster than we're building them these days, which puts hydropower, specifically hydro electric power, in a really weird place in its history. But from all the research that I've done, I don't think it's going anywhere. What I think is going on is that it's like this fork in the road and it's trying to figure out what the best way to go is to to to be sustainable and be as green as everybody likes to think it is, even though spoiler alert, it's actually not that green.

Is everyone just standing around looking at each other going, oh, kind of you.

What do you want to say something? Yeah, it's like trying to figure out a restaurant as a group of cars.

It's the worst. The best thing to do is to have a millennial friend or two in your group because they usually are really good about tackling that stuff.

Oh, I thought you're going to say they're usually really bossy. No, but whenever it's like a. A sketch fast or something where there's just a bunch of disparate people. I usually try and get a millennial in the group decision making so I can just go, I'm an old Gen Xers. I'm happy to go anywhere. So you get on your Yelp or get out your Michelin guide. Mm hmm. Or whatever you do these days. Yeah.

They all carry that that paperback Michelin Guide with the Penguin Classics version of it.

Right. So hydropower around the world, though, is pretty popular, some places more than others. I think Paraguay, they are far and away the leader, if you're talking about anywhere, because they're up to 100 percent. That's incredible. Norway, no surprise there at about 95, along with Nepal and Tajikistan. Huh. And I wanted to ask you this.

You haven't hear that China, Brazil and the US lead major countries and the US is down to six percent. So the top three, I assume, were third at six percent.

Yeah. Which just goes to show how much energy we put out, only six percent of his hydro. And yet we we're the the third in line of of hydroelectric production in the world.

China, one or two one I believe. And then Brazil.

So Brazil. Sixty seven percent. And then it goes down to six. Yeah. And that crazy. Yeah. It's a big drop. Yeah. But I mean it just goes to show like we, we produce a lot, a lot of electricity. It's just some of it is from hydro which really boggles the mind that at one point, like you were saying, a third of our power came from hydro electric production plants. It's just crazy, you know.

Yeah, I think it's down to about 16 percent worldwide, right? Yeah, it was as of four or five years ago. Yeah.

And then that actually represents a really precipitous drop, I think, in to like the mid 2000s, the aughts, it was like twenty four percent and it dropped down to 16 percent within maybe 10 years or less. And the reason for that is not necessarily that people have stopped producing as much hydropower. They've stopped building as many new projects around the world, and it started opting instead, unfortunately for what's called thermal, which is usually using a fossil fuels like coal, oil, natural gas to heat some water to produce steam to to make a turbine spin to to run a generator, basically.

And it's just cheaper it's much more understandable. There's a lot of drawbacks to it, but it just requires far less of an investment up front than building a traditional hydroelectric plant.

Yeah. And we'll, you know, detail all those pros and cons later. But, you know, if you wonder why people look to water to begin with, you need only look at water, you know, stand beside any river, especially one that's got some rapids. When you see those rapids funneling through a small channel, it gets pretty intense, you know, some serious force going through there. And at some point someone said, maybe we can harness that.

We're not exactly sure who the first people were. But of course, some people think the Chinese, the Han dynasty, they're always a good bet. Yeah. For for leading the way. Maybe the Persians or maybe they actually do have writings from the third century BCE from fellow of Byzantium. Mm hmm. Maybe made a great dough, by the way. He did.

He was also the guy who first named the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Was his one of them.

You're right. It's like you got to try it. It's the flaky. It's so good and flaky. But, yeah, there's a I think a description of a water wheel from from old fellow. Yeah.

From twenty three hundred or so years ago. So, yeah. We've figured out that like you can, you can put water to work. We've known for a long time it was using water as basically a way to produce mechanical energy, not electricity. Put a pin in that because we're going to get to it in like thirty five seconds. But first we used water to push water wheels like those charming things. You seem like a Thomas Kincaid painting. It's one of my favorite things.

They're really wonderful. I love them. They're about as queen as anything ever has been in the history of the world. There's just something so tranquil about it. But I've always loved him. And I was a kid. I remember going to Stone Mountain Park and they had the old gristmill there.

And I think I even kind of understood the purpose and just how I think it's simplicity always really just hit me right in the feels it is.

It's one of those things, Chuck, that it was it is a very simple idea, but it was like it a home run right out of the gate, like basically what we do to produce hydroelectricity. Is almost an unchanged version of the water wheel. Yeah, I mean, it's got fancier over the years. Yeah, but it's you know, we've talked about this with any type of power show that we've done, whether it was nuclear power. I feel like we've done a lot of these.

It all comes down to producing that mechanical energy to spin something, to spin a turbine. Yeah. So you spin this water wheel or turbine as we'll see, and there's a way that it spins on an axis. Well, if you insert an axle into that axis, it'll spin the axle and you can attach all sorts of cool stuff to that axle to make them spin to like you can. You can insert more wheels and have them pressed down on stone as they rotate so you can grind things or turn.

Turn. Yeah, you can milk flour. You can grind paper and or wood into pulp and make paper. You can change the rotation, the direction of the rotation to like up and down. So now all of a sudden you have pistons that can pump bellows or pump water or do all sorts of cool stuff. So that was a huge, huge advancement in the history of the world. And that's how things stayed for a couple thousand years, basically until the the 19th century when we started to develop electricity.

Somebody said very quickly, oh, you know what? Actually, we could apply that age-Old Water Wheel idea to this electrical generation. And that's exactly what they did.

And actually, the first guy, the first hydro electric power provided power to a lamp at a house called a great called the Craig side like lamp. Yeah. Yeah. Do you love lamp? I love lamp. It's in a town called Rothbury in Northumberland. And if I mispronounced Northumberland, I am not to blame on that. You cannot spell a word Northumberland and expect anyone to pronounce it any other way.

I'm trying to decipher how it's really probably pronounced like probably Christiania or something.

Yeah. Or like nothing rimland or something like that. I just inserted to be.

So however you pronounce it, guy named William Armstrong, he was like this amazing inventor who powered basically his whole house using water power. But one of the things he did was generate electricity, too. That's right. And then Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids, Michigan, said, you know what, I'm going to one up you there because we have a hydro generator, the Wolverines chair company factory. Then we have sixteen streetlights that we want to power. And I imagine all the criminals in town were like, oh, it's so much harder to commit crime with light at night.

Now I know. Especially drop crime a little bit.

I would guess so. I mean, I'm sure they had like. I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they had like the gaslights already. But the electric bill is true.

Yeah. That was gaslights I think Chuck.

So we you know, we talked a lot about hydroelectric power and our Hoover Dam. Two parter, if I remember correctly.

Yes. But I think we also might have talked about in our electric chair episode. But I feel like we may have misspoken and said that either Buffalo, New York or Niagara Falls, New York was the first city to use hydroelectric power to power its streetlights. And that's just not true. It's actually Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Yeah, they were a few years later. I love you know, I picture like this the sketch version of this is two engineers with the Niagara Falls behind them reading a newspaper going, hey, he says here in Grand Rapids, they're using water to make light. If only we had such a means to do so. And Niagara Falls behind him is just like, look at me. Yeah.

So that was just an excellent 19th century sketch that you just made, by the way.

That's one sketch was at its best.

So I don't know. I would say the seventies seventy sketches would be pretty tough to contend with.

By the way, I watch that John Belushi documentary last night. Oh, yeah, very good. And it's amazing when you look at the speaking of 70s sketch to look at these archival photos of the like house parties in Apartment Hang Stelmach, where it's like Belushi and Bill Murray and Harold Ramis and Lorraine Newman.

And I mean, just like all the comedy heroes, just sitting around, like drinking and smoking weed. Mm. Not endorse that thing, but I'd like to get that party. Yeah, I mean I mean, like, I love seeing pictures like that, for that matter. How funny that party was probably pretty great. Great. Either that or else I'd just be like I'd just be too nervous and socially anxious to talk to anybody who wouldn't have a good time at all.

Well, the first since we're on the sidetrack, the first kind of really famous hang I had like that was, I think, one of my first max functions when I was sitting in a room with basically the original Upright Citizens Brigade sons, Amy Poehler and Andy Richter, Andy Daly and all these comedy heroes. And I just I was so afraid to even speak, but I was saying jokes in my head. And then two times I said a joke in my head.

And Andy Richter said one of them. And another, I think it was Matt Walsh said another. That was basically my joke. And I was like, I'm going to start talking nice. And I did.

And you did. Did you get applause now? But they didn't all turn around and look at me and go, Who's this guy? You're like, I thought they were just like, oh, we're all just people.

Did they make you an honorary member of the Upright Citizens Brigade?

No. Did you get a T-shirt? I did get a T-shirt.

OK, I stole a T-shirt. That's good. Should we take a break? I think we should take a break. All right.

We need to get back on track and we're going to take a break and talk about the types of modern hydropower right after this.

Hey, all with that, it's just hilarious and I'm just making sure y'all know that I got a book, it's called Caerphilly Reckless on the Black Effect Network.

I'm going to be telling you all my business and some of your other people's business, too. And ain't no limits to the things that talk about, ya know, that if y'all know me from baby mama drama to healthy relationships, from child support to stimulus checks, look, will you take a step back and you realize that we all go through crazy stuff, but we got stories to tell. Those situations do not define you, but they do make for real good conversation.

In a world where click bait and cancel calls, you can tell your story before you do. I'm creating the outlet to remind people that we still human crazy and we can all laugh about it. Don't stress over it. Bring your problems to me. I promise I won't judge you, but I might crack a joke you.

Don't be scared. It'll be respectful and messy at the same time. Just make sure you tune in. Listen to Carefully Breakfast every Wednesday on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Never thought you'd make a great switchboard operator or seltzer man or professional royal mistress if full time jobs are your jam.

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OK, Chuck, so like you said a minute ago, that, like, flowing water has a lot of energy to it. I found a couple of stats that I've just got to share with everybody. OK, let's hear it.

Water flowing at four miles an hour, just four miles an.

It is very slow. Like you yawn basically when you see that it's like a walking pace, it can move a five foot diameter boulder. OK, OK, that's a big seven miles per hour has the same force as the EF five tornado and water water flowing at 25 miles per hour has the pressure equivalent of wind that's blowing at seven hundred and ninety miles per hour faster than the speed of sound. So there is a tremendous amount of kinetic energy and flowing water.

And we have figured out over time like how to maximize that.

Um, like you said, the water wheel design is basically like what we're what we're working with still today. But we've refined it so much that now we're producing these amazing turbines that spin super fast and they're designed to like to to direct water in just the right way or water's supposed to go around them just the right way or drop on them or shoot from the side and slosh around like it's on a slip and slide or something. And we've come up with a lot of turbine designs.

Basically, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, that that have really improved on the water wheel.

Yeah, those bulb types are pretty cool. That's those are watertight. And it's basically an aerodynamic chamber that's going to you know, I talked to earlier about when that water channel narrows, how much more forceful it gets. And that's what they do in this case. They focus in there, the water column and then put it to the turbine, obviously at a much higher rate. Right.

And I think that is an example of an axial flow where the flow of the water is parallel to the spin of the turbine.

Or now maybe that B radio I can't remember. But basically there's actual radio and mixed in. Most things are mixed in. A really good example of a mixed turbine is the most widely used one called the Francis Turbine, which was invented by a guy named James Francis back in the 19th century. And its its fan blades basically are adjusted to the water spills down from above onto it. But as it hits it, the families direct it downward into the side.

So the water ends up actually sloshing around parallel to the spin of the turbine and spinning it real good.

Spins it real good. Good old Francis. If you're talking about hydroelectricity these days, you're going to spin that turbine is going to spin the turbine and it's attached to a set of super powerful magnets that are turning inside a copper coil. And that movement of the magnets is going to knock those electrons loose and get those electrons flowing. And then all of a sudden those electrons flowing through. The copper is a current it's electrical current. And then they pressurize that into a really densely packed AC current.

That's really slow moving. And we talked about the invention of AC current. How that means you can just take it really, really far away and still use it without losing a lot of energy, which is great because you can dump it into the electrical grid and say you were once water, now you are electricity. Yeah, which is which is pretty cool.

Like a lot of our power actually started out as flowing water. I love that idea too. But it goes to show like we really haven't changed that water will design very much instead of a grinding wheel or a bellows. We now just have some magnets that are attached to the turbine and they spin around inside of that that coil. And that's that's that. I mean, like, it's I know we talked about it in our episode on electricity, but I'm still to this day amazed that that's it's just so primitive.

But it works.

So if it ain't broke, don't fix it basically is the big motto of the electrical production industry and donkeys the world over said thank you because now I don't have to be right hooked to a thing and walk in a circle all day long unless they're making midscale is we talked about in our book, you got to use the traditional donkey.

That's right. Okay. Well taken care of. I am sure they are.

If you. Yeah. If you have a donkey that makes mesoscale for you, but you treat it really nice.

So there are four main categories of hydro electric power plants these days. The first one, the impoundment is the one you kind of think of when you think of like the Hoover Dam. This water is impounded. They stop that flow. It's impounded in a big reservoir. They release it through these gates, through these tunnels called PIN stocks that we talked a lot about in the Hoover Dam episode. And it's going to just you know, they're using gravity basically to make water fall and gain all this turn all that potential energy into whatever the other kind of energy is.

The kinetic, kinetic energy. Yeah. Yeah.

And so empowerment schemes make use of what's called the hydraulic head, which is basically the height of the drop from, say, the gates where the water enters the penstock to the point where that water hits the turbine and the higher the head, the higher. The drop, the more energy you can get out of the water, the faster it makes the turbines spin. So that's why that's why dams are just so damn high and tall, because they have a really high hydraulic head and you can just get a lot more electricity, a lot more kinetic energy out of that falling water.

But as we'll see, that's actually kind of a problem. The fact that the high head high hydro power is basically the state of the art. We need to advance past that. Just a little a little taste, a little foreshadowing right there. That's right.

Then you've got, I think, of my favorite one, which is diversion or the run of river hydropower, which is this is using water that's already flowing. You got a river that's flowing. And someone came along and said, hey, this river's got some good action. Why don't we just divert some of this and channel it off to the side and create some electricity that way and then just let that water dump back in and do its thing on downstream?

Yeah.

And so some of them do just divert some of the river to produce electrical power. Some like to stick a whole plant in the river. But the key here is, is that they're not like you said, they're not like trying to keep the water blocked up behind a dam. But there's still probably a drop because, again, this hydraulic head is basically the key to hydroelectric power generation right now.

I think the conduit, which is a subtype of the diversion conduit or canal, is pretty neat, too, because basically they use these water pipes that may be part of a big irrigation system or some other kind of water project. You know, like we might as well stick a turbine in that thing because we're diverting that water through a pipe anyway. Right.

So it might as well just capture some of the energy as it's passing by. I think that's a spectacular idea. So that's like you got empowerment, diversion. And then another type is called pump storage. And pump storage is very much like empowerment. There's like an upper reservoir and penstock and you let the water flow through past the turbine and you generate electricity. But unlike empowerment, where when the water exits, it just goes downstream and keeps flowing and it's like, what the hell just happened?

You actually capture the water. I have to say, I've said dam and hell in this episode. No, I'm really pushing the envelope. If you ask me. I feel like Bart Simpson. Well, he said, damn, I took it to mean damn high, literally. But yeah, you're in trouble for saying thank you.

Thank you. So pump storage, rather than letting the water just exit and flow down river, there's a lower reservoir, too, that captures the water and keeps it from flowing out. And then that's what you do. You let the water flow from upper to lower during peak electricity hours or peak demand so you can produce electricity. And then when it's not peak demand, people don't need as much like city. You can use some of that electricity that you've generated to pump the water from the lower reservoir back up to the upper reservoir, which is pretty awesome.

It makes it basically like a rechargeable battery.

It's pretty cool. We spend a lot of time on lakes and here in Georgia and the dam is very close to where we are. There's two dams, one at the north and one at the south end, and we go to the north end one. And it's just fun to go up there and watch when it's going through. It's I guess when they're releasing the most water because it's just crazy. Like the water in front of it is really choppy, but it's not going in any sort of pattern.

It's just you'll see a big swirling pool to your right, then another one in front of you. And like jet skis and boats are kind of like trying to fight against the current to get close and then get pushed back. It's it's really I mean, that's a violent. But it's just but it's not loud, so it doesn't seem violent, but it's churning that water up. And I think fish because the birds go crazy when this is going on.

Man Yeah. It sounds like utter chaos. It's it is. But it's quiet chaos. Oh is it quiet.

It to me in my head it sounded like really loud and mushy and everything. Now it's not really wishe. You just see the water churning and moving and it's pretty cool.

Why is it there if there's if there's a chance to do something dumb, somebody on a jet ski is going to try it. Yeah. Have you ever noticed. Yeah. Jet ski and I know jet ski people are there different. There's a certain breed they got, they got a little bit of daredevil into my guess. They do. I mean some of the things are crazy. They go like eighty miles an hour. That's not safe.

No, it's not. One of the other last things about pump storage, Chuck, is that they've figured out and I think I feel like we've talked about this before I mentioned it, that a really good thing to do with a pump storage hydroelectric plant is to actually use excess energy from wind and solar that say you can't store anywhere. You use that to pump the water back up to the upper reservoir. And it's basically like. Again, recharging a battery, using wind or solar, so you could conceivably power your whole pump storage hydroelectric plant using nothing but renewable resources.

That's amazing. Yeah, I like that stuff. I love, like ecology almost as much as Earth science because, you know, it ties into it.

So, yeah, you're kind of cousins for sure. Then finally, you have marine hydro kinetics, which we talked about. Do you remember the name of the episode, Ken Ocean's Power The World from 9/11, and that is using ocean currents and waves and tidal currents. I wondered if any of the Great Lakes could produce enough of a current to be useful, or is it only ocean?

No, I think anywhere that has any kind of wave action, tidal action or currents, you could totally you could totally make use of it. And apparently there's there's tides and currents in the Great Lakes. I had no idea. But I remember somebody saying that recently.

I just remember learning that when I saw Ferris Bueller in high school and there's that scene by what's the Great Lake there in Chicago?

Was that Lake Michigan, I think, superior spirit of boy, we're getting crushed right now.

I think let's just name them all. It could be eerie. Maybe Huron, Ontario, one of those.

It's not Ontario, but I just remember seeing that scene by the lake and all those waves and stuff. And I was like, wait a minute. I thought there in Chicago, where the heck are they? Right. And someone said, no, that's that's a great lake. And it has it can look like the ocean like that one.

I mean, now I remember I recall back to my boyhood when I would play in the lake and I guess there would be waves, but it never occurred to me that they just shouldn't be there and that they were freaks of nature.

What lake did you go to? Erie. OK, you sure about that? I'm positive. OK, Oncotype Island. So with the Marine Hydro Kinetics, they can and you should go back and listen to that episode. It's really good. But one type is, is if they build it, you know, a plant right along the shore there and it's got that turbine at the top and seawater flows in and out and they use that wave action and the tidal movement coming and going to run that turbine spin in that turbine.

It all goes back to spinning that wheel.

Yeah, I actually saw there is a University of Florida study that that said Florida alone could probably produce 10 gigawatts of electricity from marine hydro kinetic schemes alone, and which is pretty substantial because all of the hydro electric output in the entire United States right now is thirteen gigawatts. So there'd be a pretty big addition actually, if they could figure out how to do it.

You know, I thought of another musician from Gainesville, Florida, the other day when I was listing them. Who? Stephen Stills. I can't believe it forgot. Stephen Stills, Steve Stills.

Stevie Stills is from Gainesville, which, yeah, he's one of my favorites, too.

Out of all of the Crosby, Stills and Nash, people are just in general. Well, yeah, I think out of all I mean, Neil Young is the king, obviously, but Stephen Stills was in Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young and he also had this great band that did a one off record band called Manassas. That was awesome.

OK, well, what about out of Emerson, Lake and Palmer?

I mean, if you're not a lake man, then I don't know what you're doing in life. What about Bachman Turner Overdrive? You got to go with overdrive. OK, yeah. Totally overdrive. He was awesome. Sure. You you want to take a second break?

Yeah, I think so. I think that is our new cue. And I get really off track here to stop the show and then pick up again with the topic in New Q..

All right. We'll be right back, everybody. We got to sort ourselves out.

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Well, you can, with BuzzFeed Daily hosted by me, Casey Rock'em and me Zaphod on our show, we've got more good news and more pop culture, more Meems and more celebrity to more of everything that's blowing up your timeline and trending on the Internet every weekday evening, we're giving you more of what you need to enjoy your day, because what's life, if it is it to be enjoyed?

Listen to BuzzFeed Daily on the radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. OK, so if you're not just starry eyed over hydropower right now, you clearly haven't been paying attention to this episode like we're mad at you. Hydropower is amazing. Like it uses water is fuel. Right. And water is a renewable resource that we're never going to run out of it thanks to the hydrologic cycle, which replenishes the earth's water all the time.

The fact that rivers flow thanks to the force of gravity and the rains swell their their flow and it happens seasonally every season, you can kind of set your watch by it. It's pretty amazing stuff. Pretty cool. And then the other fact that when we run this water, when we build like hydroelectric plants on rivers and things like that, when we use it as fuel, it doesn't exhaust the water. Like the water just loses a little bit of its kinetic energy for a second.

But when it flows out the other side, it regains it rather quickly. You know, it doesn't need to be replenished. It's not wasted. Like you just stole a little bit of its kinetic energy and used it for something else. And the river was like, whatever, I got it right back. So it's a pretty amazing green source of energy. You can understand why people have been so, so kooky for it for a while. Plus, it doesn't expend any greenhouse gases in its production, right?

Yeah, if you hate greenhouse gases, then you love hydro electric power because along with solar, nuclear and wind, it has no emissions. And we've talked about nuclear. There are some problems there. And, you know, wind and solar is great, too. There's nothing that's perfect. There is a byproduct by producing solar panels and wind turbines and, you know, there's ecological impacts with any type of energy production. It's all about just making efforts to minimize those as much as possible.

Right. The other thing about hydro electric power is that they're it's just simpler. Like we're talking about thermal. There's a couple of extra additional steps, which is like loading the fuel, lighting the fuel, basically burning to create steam to spin the turbine. This is just water passing by that spins the turbine. So because there's fewer steps and there's fewer machinery, less machinery involved, it's a it's a simpler technology, which means that ultimately, especially if you look at the lifespan of a hydroelectric plant over time, it's much more cost effective than a thermal power plant for sure.

It's just again, it costs a lot more upfront to build one. But when they build them, they usually build until last usually decades, longer than a thermal power plant to.

Yeah, and then if you're in the in the business of creating power, you kind of love hydroelectric power because it's instantaneous. If demand goes up, you can just spin that turbine faster and allow more water to flow through if, you know, sometimes it goes dormant and you turn it off. But if you need power, just get it going again. And it's not like it takes it doesn't have to heat up or anything. You're like producing power and electricity the minute that thing starts spinning.

Yeah, well, actually, there's there's measurements of the ramp up time and for some kinds of hydroelectric power, it's less than a minute, about 30 seconds from zero to producing all the power. You're like it's peak out power output. Other kinds are five minutes. So I saw anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes ramp up time for things like coal and oil. It can take half a day to a couple of days. Wow. From starting from scratch to full power.

So that's a huge, huge bonuses if you're an energy producer, you know. Yeah.

So, you know, we've kind of put a pin in the problems. And like I said a second ago, there is no type of power production that is perfect. Everything's going to have some sort of impact on the environment. And in the case of hydro electric power, there are a few ways and it's funny, you know, it sounds so great, but then when you start kind of reading through these things, it's, you know, some of the air is let out of the balloon a little bit.

Yeah, but we have to cover this stuff. When you're going to build a big reservoir for a dam, there's going to be a lot of impacts on the environment. Everything above that used to be shoreline and dry or maybe even marshy or forest land is going to be an aquatic ecosystem pretty quickly within about a year. And there's a lot of plants and animals and insects and reptiles and fish and birds that live in that area. And some of them can adapt.

Some of them move along and find a new home. And sadly, some of them die out and they don't have a chance to relocate or adapt.

Yeah, any time they build a big dam project, you're probably going to find within a year or two or a handful reports of. Entire species that had gone extinct because of that dam project and a lot of people have kind of woken up over the last few decades, especially as as the world has become much more environmentally conscious since the 70s and said, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is this is a big deal here, actually. And hydropower, I think, has kind of gotten away with trading.

Yeah, special special murder in special murder.

But Hydra's gotten gotten away by trading on its kind of green reputation. And finally, people started calling it out and saying, like, this is not acceptable. We have to figure out a better way. And that's kind of what I was referring to or not just kind of like that is almost entirely what I was referring to, where Hydro and we'll talk about the future in a second.

But it's at this point where it's like, how can we do this? So that because this is an amazing green renewable energy source, but it's also having devastating environmental impact. So we've got to figure this out so we can keep doing this, but we've got to do it without, you know, wiping out entire species every time we build a new dam. Yeah, totally.

The other thing that can happen beyond the animals that did mention plants, but all that above water, vegetation up there is going to be flooded and that, you know, that those plants lived in certain kinds of conditions. That wasn't a lake bottom, basically. And it's going to decompose. It's going to release methane and CO2 into the atmosphere during those drought periods when that reservoir evaporates. And then you've got all the downstream problems to stuff that was, you know, instead of flooding these downstream ecosystems, it's kind of like the opposite of what's going on up top, right?

They're going to dry up. And all those all that nutrient rich silt that's deposited downstream as the river flows is blocked by the dams. And that's going to build up in the reservoir, causing problems for the dam itself and nutrient depletion downstream. So, you know, it's kind of messing up both sides. Yeah. And so even even for aquatic animals, it it's a pretty big problem. Just building a dam is an obstacle for the fish that used to live there.

So fish that, you know, used to swim upstream past where that dam is now located to its breeding grounds is spawning grounds. They have a problem. They have a big problem getting around. And the hydro industry has looked into all sorts of different ways to help these fish get around more easily. So there's fish diversion channels, there's fish ladders, basically a system of locks that the fish are meant to climb. You know, I think we talked about in the Hoover Dam episode that there's like fish airdrops, trucking, fish, fish cannons, all sorts of weird stuff.

None of them none of them hold a candle to unobstructed reach of a river like that's what you want. So that's another challenge that's facing the hydro electric production industry is OK, like basically anything we do is going to negatively impact the fish population. So that's a that's a big challenge for them as well.

A unobstructed river, though, is not nearly as fun as the fish cannon.

So I don't know about for the fish before, you know, jet skiers hanging out, watching them get shot upstream. I think we I think we did research in the fish cannons and they're OK, right? Yeah.

But I mean, it's got to scare the. Sure. Yeah, I know. You know, I mean, you know, I don't know.

I'm sure some of them do. The fish equivalent of jet skis are being shot. Come on bro. Send me through again. There are also humans that live in communities that live near where these dams are built and they will get what's it called when you have to force someone out of a place, this place. Yeah, but the the actual moved along. Oh. Now what do you call it, though, when the government steps in and say, hey, we got to move your house because we're going to build a school eminent domain.

Yes.

OK, well, they will come through and say, I'm sorry, community, but we're going to build the dam here. You're going to leave. Here's some money maybe to help you out with this. Yeah, but you don't have a choice. We're going to flood. And in fact, all the the lakes in Georgia are manmade power producing lakes. And there were once communities in some of these places. And there are stories of cars and houses at the bottoms of some of these lakes.

Yeah, it just just creeps filled me, man. I love looking at pictures of that kind of stuff and thinking about it. But yeah, you know, I've told you before being in, you know, any of the Georgia lakes, I always am like what is beneath me right now. It's awesome. It's thrilling, but terrifying at the same time. Like being on a jet ski, huh.

And that's without even counting the catfish that are. Serious creatures on the right or the guard? Good Lord, man, I saw a car last summer that I had never seen one in person before.

It looks prehistoric. It really does.

And they're very scary looking. And they'll they'll eat absolutely anything. You can have a guard problem real quick.

So the people that have been displaced, I think the World Commission on Dams did a study and they estimated in the year 2000 that dams had physically displace between 40 and 80 million people all around the world. Yeah, that's so many people. I mean, it's just like you said, like, sorry, you have to move. You don't like this is this is going to be underwater, you know, very soon. And then when you build the dam, even once you settle resettle the people who used to live in what's now a reservoir, the people downstream are are under constant threat of the dam failing.

Sure. And that happens. And it happens. Whole towns get flooded out. Lots of people can die. Millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of damage is done. So and it's not like it's not like that's just a remote possibility. Right. Apparently, as of 2015, the American Society for Civil Engineers identified fifteen thousand six hundred dams just in the United States that pose the highest hazard potential, the most critical for failure.

15000 dams right now are really menacing, like a guy in a jet ski circling you. That level of menacing.

Yeah, and I think it was that one too many times. I think that three or four that was like seven was about to say three is a magic number.

So maybe six is twice as good. But yes, seven too much. OK, I think they're about ninety 90000 dams in the US, so that's fifteen thousand of those ninety thousands are high hazard. Yeah. And you know when you hear about government and politics, you'll often hear talk of like, hey, the one thing we can agree on we got to get together on is infrastructure. This is what they're talking about, roads and bridges and stuff like that.

But part of it is dams. And like, you know, one of the ideas of moving forward is let's get in there. Let's I think only twenty four hundred of the ninety thousand dams in the US even produce electricity. Right. So one of the ideas is let's get in there, let's shore these things up. Let's take as many of them as possible that aren't producing electricity since they're already there anyway, and retrofit them to produce electricity and they'll be safer and actually be doing something other than just being a dam.

Yeah, which I mean, it's like that's that's just the lowest hanging fruit you can think of right there. It's like these dams already have their environmental impact decades ago. So it's it's not as bad as, you know, you might as well like put them to good use. And it's certainly preferable to to building another dam to generate power. It's like, what are you even doing? Like, don't do that. Wait until all of the dams that need shoring up anyway are producing electrical power, then maybe we can look in a more dam projects.

Apparently that is not how the industry goes. Like I said, they kind of seem to have traded on their, you know, green energy image. But they're they're in energy sector. They're part of the energy sector. And they they do things they don't like, things like government regulation and they don't like things like, you know, tribes or local governments having a say in their licensing and all that stuff. So they lobby against that kind of thing, their, you know, their corporation.

So it's a real problem in the in the industry that right now they seem to be largely in favor of pressing back against environmental regulations or regulations that lessen the industry's impact, rather than saying, yeah, you know, like we really need to we really need to figure out how to do this the right way. They're just trying to squeeze as many nickels as they can out before they're forced to do it the right way.

Yeah, this one in Turkey sounds like a real nasty one. They're building on the Tigris. It's going to flood 90 miles of the river, plus one hundred and fifty miles of tributaries. Big time damage to the ecosystems there. And we're talking ancient archaeological sites that are going to be wiped out, people displaced. And a lot of people in the international community have said, hey, Turkey, why don't you think about some different ways to do this?

And Turkey said, no, this is what we're doing. We're going to push forward with this. We have another one on the Euphrates that is reduced water flow to Iraq to itself by 80 percent.

It's caused the loss of sixty one thousand. Acres of arable land every year. It's just such an astounding figure. It's like, how is there any any land left, you know? Yeah. So there are fortunately a lot of people in the industry who are like the writing's on the wall, like this is just too good of an energy source to stop, but it's having too big of an environmental impact. Just keep going forward in this direction. So they're trying to find ways to make it better.

One of the inventions that I saw was called Moveable Hepp Hydro Electric Power Plant.

Movable, not that you just move it wherever you want, like whenever you want, but the actual the actual plant itself can move up or down.

Basically, Castor's does get it moves up and down depending on how high or low the river is, which is good because, you know, seasonally river river height, which has a huge impact on the amount of energy it has, you know, ebbs and flows, basically.

So if you can lower, you know, your your your power plant in the water further when the water's lower or raise it when it's high, you can also make it easier for fish to go around above or under unobstructed, which is a huge, huge bonus, too.

Yeah, there's another couple of technologies that are very cool. One called a village or you, L.H., very low head or ultra low head facilities. We talked about the head is being, you know, that volume of water plus the amount of drop. And basically they just don't need that much of a drop, much less of an environmental footprint. Doesn't require some big, large dam or a big concrete span to create that huge drop. The fish can take that drop, which is, you know, a big deal.

Right. And then these low velocity turbines. I really like this idea. It's basically saying, hey, why don't we just concentrate on or one of the things we can concentrate on is making our turbines just super efficient. And they don't have to spin at 90 RPM's. They don't have spin very fast at all. So you can produce, you know, maybe the same amount of electricity without the need for those high pressure stocks. Right.

So the fish can just swim right through there. You're doing that slowly. I think from what I saw, the reason why everybody's not just going to the the the low velocity turbines is because it's way cheaper to buy and install and operate. Yeah, I figured the high speed turbines, but the fact that people are thinking about this stuff and that they're coming up with new designs and they're proving that these things can work. And we're also simultaneously, you know, publishing studies about the huge environmental impact that that this green energy has.

I think that those two things combined are going to to kind of pick Hydro back up and brush it off and and actually make it green, you know, in the near future.

So I hope so. I mean, sometimes you got to I know it's antithetical to capitalism and wringing every last penny out of your company, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet a little bit and that's a little bit more and something that's better for the world down the line and still make gobs of money. Exactly. Nicely put, Chuck. Thank you. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either. MAN So that's hydropower.

Look for another supplement edition of Hydro or probably somewhere down the line. And in the meantime, until then, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this a little statistical analysis from a listener. And it's a little frightening to see how long it takes to listen to our catalog. Oh, boy.

Happy New Year to each of you. A huge thanks for what you guys do to me, as do many other fans. Your podcast never fails to bring a good laugh when I'm down. Take my mind off studies when I'm feeling stressed or to piqued my interest on a fascinating topic. When I'm a little bored, I listen every day, which means many repeats and I still never struggle to find an episode to keep me interested.

As you may be aware, at the end of the year, Spotify gives a nice wrap up on individual listening habits. I listen to over one hundred and ten thousand minutes on Spotify music and podcasts combined and the year twenty twenty. I listen to over five hundred episodes of stuff you should know at an accumulated twenty four thousand two hundred and fifty six minutes. Wow. My biggest streak.

Wow. Was twenty nine episodes in one day. Wow.

Anthony even says wow. I want to add I'm not often the type of person to fall asleep listening to you all, but which would account for a lot of playtime. So this is like daytime listening.

It sounds like you'd have to be on speed that day to listen to twenty nine episodes in one day and then he's not on speed.

You all have helped me through some of the hardest times as well as shared in some of the greatest times, all without even knowing it, especially this year with covid in a very stressful some. I started law school, he truly helped this make this year the best it could be. Hope you had a relaxing holiday and a great start to the New Year. Chao Anthony Soprano.

P.S. I love speed. No hate speed. That's great. You should know.

That's great, Anthony. Good luck with law school, too. I actually saw a couple of people who topped his his total minutes.

I think somebody tweeted because, like, you can you can tweet that really easily or post it. Yeah. A lot of people searching those out.

I saw one and I don't I'm sorry. I don't know what their name is, but they had like 55000 minutes. Listen to stuff. You should know what's in that nuts, man. So hats off to everybody who listens to us in general. But also, if you listen to us that much, we really appreciate you. And hopefully we never annoy you. Like, hopefully one day it never just clicks and you're like, I can never listen to these guys again.

I've heard too much, you know. Yeah. Total. So be careful out there, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Everybody, be careful if you want to get in touch with us like Anthony did. We love hearing from our friends. That means you you can send us an email to stuff podcast that I heart radio dotcom. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts, my heart radio is at the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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