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How Hydropower Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's
0:17
Speaker 1: here too, somewhere not just in spirit, but like digitally virtually.
0:23
Speaker 1: She's like, um, Johnny depp in uh um no that oh,
0:32
Speaker 1: Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, that's what Jerry's like. I've
0:37
Speaker 1: been singing Judas Priests all day because of this. Instead
0:41
Speaker 1: of Turbo Lover, I'm singing hydro power. Oh that's pretty cool, man.
0:47
Speaker 1: Can you give us a little couple of verses? Um
0:50
Speaker 1: me drove power? M what comes? And failed to mention
0:55
Speaker 1: I'm wearing my leathers okay, just the leather of us
1:00
Speaker 1: did no shared underneath? Yeah? And and nothing else but boots?
1:03
Speaker 1: Some buttless chaps, that's awesome. Really, are there any is
1:08
Speaker 1: there any need to make any other kind of chaps?
1:12
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they usually don't have a butt, right,
1:13
Speaker 1: You're just expected to wear something underneath. Maybe that's what
1:16
Speaker 1: it is, But then the whole thing just calling them
1:19
Speaker 1: buttless chaps is superfluous. Yeah, it's redundant, right Yeah. Um,
1:24
Speaker 1: So since we started talking about buttless chaps. Since we
1:27
Speaker 1: coined a new term, buttless chaps. I think we're the
1:31
Speaker 1: first people to ever use those two words together. Yeah,
1:34
Speaker 1: people usually say the A word, right exactly. Uh, we're
1:37
Speaker 1: clearly talking about hydro power, not just hydro electric power. Friends.
1:42
Speaker 1: Hydro power. There's a lot of energy and that their water,
1:47
Speaker 1: and we humans have have gotten pretty clever at figure
1:49
Speaker 1: out how to extract it. Yeah, and this is something
1:53
Speaker 1: that we used to use a lot more of in
1:55
Speaker 1: this country. Um. Up until about the mid twentieth century,
1:59
Speaker 1: we were using lots of hydro power, and it peaked
2:01
Speaker 1: in about nineteen sixty. Now we're down to just about
2:05
Speaker 1: six percent of our power being created through the use
2:08
Speaker 1: of water. But there's still a lot of you know,
2:11
Speaker 1: hydro power plants in the US about the US has
2:15
Speaker 1: a bunch, but we're also tearing them down along with
2:18
Speaker 1: Europe at a rated about like one per week, these dams,
2:21
Speaker 1: right yeah, Yeah, and we're tearing we're removing dams, demolishing
2:25
Speaker 1: them faster than we're building them these days, which puts
2:28
Speaker 1: hydro power, UM, specifically hydro electric power in a really
2:33
Speaker 1: weird place in its history. But from all the research
2:36
Speaker 1: that I'm I've done. I don't think it's going anywhere.
2:40
Speaker 1: What I think is going on is that it's at
2:43
Speaker 1: like this fork in the road, and it's trying to
2:45
Speaker 1: figure out what the best way to go is to
2:47
Speaker 1: to to be sustainable and be as green as everybody
2:51
Speaker 1: likes to think it is, even though spoiler alertic actually
2:54
Speaker 1: not that green. Does everyone just standing around look at
2:57
Speaker 1: each other, going kind of you, what do you want
3:01
Speaker 1: to do something? Yeah, it's like trying to figure out
3:04
Speaker 1: a restaurant as a group. Oh god, that's the worst.
3:08
Speaker 1: The best thing to do is to have a millennial
3:11
Speaker 1: friend or two in your group, because they usually are
3:14
Speaker 1: really good about tackling that stuff. Oh I thought you're
3:17
Speaker 1: gonna say they're they're usually really bossy. No. But whenever
3:20
Speaker 1: it's like a a sketch fest or something where there's
3:24
Speaker 1: just a bunch of disparate people, I usually try and
3:27
Speaker 1: get a millennial in the group decision making so I
3:30
Speaker 1: can just go I'm an old gen x er. I'm
3:32
Speaker 1: happy to go anywhere. So get on your yelp or
3:36
Speaker 1: get out your Michelin Guide or whatever your kid to
3:39
Speaker 1: do these days. Yeah, they all carry that that paperback
3:43
Speaker 1: Michelin Guide with them the Penguin Classics version of it. Right. So,
3:48
Speaker 1: hydro power around the world, though, is pretty popular, um,
3:52
Speaker 1: some places more than others. I think Paraguay they are
3:56
Speaker 1: far and away the leader if you're talking about anywhere,
3:59
Speaker 1: because they're a Norway no surprise there at about nine
4:04
Speaker 1: five along with Nepal and uh Tajiki stand and I
4:09
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you this. You haven't here that China,
4:11
Speaker 1: Brazil in the US lead major countries, and the US
4:14
Speaker 1: is down to six percent, so the top three. I
4:18
Speaker 1: assume we're third at six uh yeah, which just goes
4:23
Speaker 1: to show how much energy we put out only six
4:26
Speaker 1: percent of his hydro and yet we um we're the
4:29
Speaker 1: third in line of of um hydro electric production in
4:33
Speaker 1: the world. China one or two uh one I believe,
4:37
Speaker 1: and then Brazil. So Brazil and then it goes down
4:40
Speaker 1: to six. Yeah. An't that crazy? Yeah, it's a big drop. Yeah,
4:45
Speaker 1: But I mean that just goes to show like we
4:47
Speaker 1: we've produced a lot, a lot of electricity and it's
4:50
Speaker 1: just some of it is is um from hydro which
4:53
Speaker 1: really boggles the mind that at one point, like you
4:56
Speaker 1: were saying a third of our power came from hydro
4:59
Speaker 1: electri production plants. It's just crazy, you know. Yeah, I
5:03
Speaker 1: think it's down to about sixteen worldwide, right, yeah, five
5:09
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, and then that actually represents a really
5:13
Speaker 1: precipitous drop. UM. I think in too, like the mid
5:16
Speaker 1: two thousands of the odds it was at like and
5:20
Speaker 1: it dropped down to sixteent within maybe ten years or less. UM.
5:25
Speaker 1: And the reason for that it's not necessarily that people
5:27
Speaker 1: have stopped producing as much hydro power. UM, they've stopped
5:33
Speaker 1: building as many new projects around the world and have
5:36
Speaker 1: started opting instead, unfortunately for what's called thermal which is
5:40
Speaker 1: usually UM using a fossil fuel like coal, oil, natural
5:44
Speaker 1: gas to heat some water to produce steam to make
5:48
Speaker 1: a turbine spin to UM to run a generator basically,
5:53
Speaker 1: and UM, it's just cheaper, it's much more understandable. UM.
5:57
Speaker 1: There's a lot of drawbacks to it, but it just
6:00
Speaker 1: requires far less of an investment up front than building
6:04
Speaker 1: a traditional hydro electric plant. Yeah, and we'll we'll get
6:07
Speaker 1: you know, detail all those pros and cons later. But
6:10
Speaker 1: you know, if you wonder why people look to water
6:13
Speaker 1: to begin with, you need only look at water. Uh,
6:17
Speaker 1: you know, stand beside any river, especially when this's got
6:19
Speaker 1: some rapids. When you see those rapids funneling through a
6:22
Speaker 1: small channel, it gets pretty intense, you know, uh, some
6:27
Speaker 1: serious force going through there. And at some point someone said,
6:32
Speaker 1: maybe we can harness that. We're not exactly sure who
6:35
Speaker 1: the first people were, but um, of course some people
6:38
Speaker 1: think the Chinese, the Han dynasty, they're always a good
6:40
Speaker 1: bet for for leading the way. Maybe the Persians or
6:44
Speaker 1: maybe they actually do. Have writings from the third century
6:47
Speaker 1: BC from Philo of Byzantium, may he made a great
6:52
Speaker 1: dough by the way he did. He was also the
6:54
Speaker 1: guy who first um named the seven wonders of the
6:58
Speaker 1: ancient world. Well, his dough one of them, right, He's like,
7:03
Speaker 1: you gotta try it. It's the flakiest, it's so good
7:06
Speaker 1: and flakey. But yeah, there's a i think a description
7:09
Speaker 1: of a water wheel from from old Philo. Yeah, from
7:12
Speaker 1: twenty three hundred or so years ago. So yeah, we've
7:16
Speaker 1: figured out that, like you can, you can put water
7:18
Speaker 1: to work. Um, we've known for a long time it
7:22
Speaker 1: was using water as um basically a way to produce
7:28
Speaker 1: mechanical energy, not electricity. Put a pin in that because
7:31
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to it in like thirty five seconds.
7:34
Speaker 1: But first we used water to um push water wheels,
7:38
Speaker 1: like those charming things you've seen like a Thomas Kincaid painting.
7:41
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things. They're really wonderful. I
7:44
Speaker 1: love them. They're about as coins as anything ever has
7:48
Speaker 1: been in the history of the world. There's just something
7:50
Speaker 1: so tranquil about it. But if you always loved them.
7:53
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I remember going to Stone
7:55
Speaker 1: Mountain Park and they had the old grist mill there,
7:58
Speaker 1: and I think I even kind of understood that. The
8:01
Speaker 1: purpose and just how I think it's simplicity always really
8:06
Speaker 1: just hit me right where in the in the fields
8:10
Speaker 1: it is. It's one of those things Chuck that it was.
8:13
Speaker 1: It is a very simple idea, but it was like
8:17
Speaker 1: it's a home run right out of the gate. Like
8:19
Speaker 1: basically what we do to produce hydroelectricity is almost an
8:23
Speaker 1: unchanged version of you know, the water wheel. Yeah, I
8:27
Speaker 1: mean it's got fancier over the years, but it's like,
8:30
Speaker 1: and you know, we've talked about this with any type
8:33
Speaker 1: of power show that we've done, whether it was nuclear power.
8:37
Speaker 1: I feel like we've done a lot of these. It
8:40
Speaker 1: all comes down to producing that mechanical energy to spin something,
8:44
Speaker 1: to spin a turbine. Yeah, so, um, you spin this
8:48
Speaker 1: water wheel or turbine as we'll see. Um, and there's
8:51
Speaker 1: a that spins on an axis. Well, if you insert
8:54
Speaker 1: an axle into that axis, it will spin the axle,
8:57
Speaker 1: and you can attach all sorts of cool stuff to
9:00
Speaker 1: that axle to make them spin too. Like you can
9:03
Speaker 1: you can insert more wheels and have them pressed down
9:06
Speaker 1: on stone as they rotate, so you can grind things
9:09
Speaker 1: or put turn turn. Yeah, you can mill flour. You
9:12
Speaker 1: can grind paper into or wood into pulp and make paper.
9:17
Speaker 1: You can change the rotation, the direction of the rotation
9:21
Speaker 1: to like up and down. So now all of a
9:23
Speaker 1: sudden you have pistons that can pump bellows or pump water,
9:26
Speaker 1: or do all sorts of cool stuff. So that was
9:28
Speaker 1: a huge, huge advancement in the history of the world,
9:32
Speaker 1: and that's how things stayed for a couple of thousand years,
9:36
Speaker 1: basically until the nineteenth century when we started to develop electricity.
9:42
Speaker 1: Somebody said, very quickly, oh, you know what, actually we
9:45
Speaker 1: could apply that age old water wheel idea to this
9:49
Speaker 1: electrical generation. And that's exactly what they did. And actually
9:53
Speaker 1: the first guy, the first hydro electric power provided power
9:59
Speaker 1: to a lamp at a house called called the Craigside
10:05
Speaker 1: like lamp, Yeah, yeah, you love lamp lamp. It's in
10:10
Speaker 1: a town called Rothbury in Northumberland. And if I mispronounced Northumberland,
10:17
Speaker 1: I am not to blame on that. You cannot spell
10:20
Speaker 1: a word Northumberland and expect anyone to pronounce it any
10:24
Speaker 1: other way. I'm trying to decipher how it's really probably
10:28
Speaker 1: pronounced like probably christer Shire or something yeah, or like
10:32
Speaker 1: nothing rum Bland or something like that I just inserted
10:36
Speaker 1: to be, So, however you pronounce it. A guy named
10:40
Speaker 1: William Armstrong. He was like this amazing inventor who powered
10:44
Speaker 1: basically his whole house using water power. But one of
10:46
Speaker 1: the things he did was generate electricity too, that's right.
10:50
Speaker 1: And then Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids Michigan said, you know what,
10:54
Speaker 1: I'm gonna one up you there because we have a
10:57
Speaker 1: hydro generator at the Wolverine Chair Company factory and we
11:01
Speaker 1: have sixteen street lights that we want to power. And
11:04
Speaker 1: I imagine all the criminals in town were like, oh,
11:07
Speaker 1: it's so much harder to commit crime with light at night, now,
11:11
Speaker 1: I know, especially dropped crime a little bit, I would guess. So,
11:16
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they had like I'm sure yeah, yeah, yeah,
11:19
Speaker 1: I'm sure they had like the gas lights already, but
11:21
Speaker 1: the electricals is true. Yeah, those gas lights, I think, Chuck.
11:25
Speaker 1: So we You know, we talked a lot about hydro
11:27
Speaker 1: electric power in our Hoover Damn two parter, if I
11:30
Speaker 1: remember correctly, Yes, but I think we also might have
11:33
Speaker 1: talked about in our Electric Chair episode. But I feel
11:37
Speaker 1: like we may have misspoken and said that, Um, either Buffalo,
11:41
Speaker 1: New York or Niagara Falls, New York was the first
11:44
Speaker 1: city to use hydro electric power to power it's street lights.
11:48
Speaker 1: And that's just not true. It's actually Grand Rapids Michigan. Yeah,
11:51
Speaker 1: they were a few years later. I love how you
11:54
Speaker 1: know a picture like this, The sketch version of this
11:58
Speaker 1: is two engineers with the Niagara Falls behind them, reading
12:02
Speaker 1: a newspaper going, hey, he says he had Grand Rapids
12:05
Speaker 1: are using water to make light if only we had
12:10
Speaker 1: such a means to do so, and Niagara Falls behind him.
12:14
Speaker 1: It is just like look at me. Yeah, so um,
12:20
Speaker 1: that was just an excellent nineteenth century sketch that you
12:23
Speaker 1: just made. By the way, that's when sketch was at
12:25
Speaker 1: its best. So I don't know, I would say the
12:29
Speaker 1: seventies seventies sketches would be they're they're pretty tough to
12:32
Speaker 1: to contain with. By the way, I watched that John
12:35
Speaker 1: Belushi documentary last night, very good, and it's amazing when
12:40
Speaker 1: you look at the speaking of seventies sketch, to look
12:43
Speaker 1: at these archival photos of the like house parties and
12:49
Speaker 1: apartment hangs where it's like Belushi and Bill Murray and
12:53
Speaker 1: Harold Ramos and Lorraine Newman, and I mean just like
12:58
Speaker 1: all the comedy heroes just sitting around like drinking and
13:02
Speaker 1: smoking weed. Now that I endorsed that thing, but I'd
13:07
Speaker 1: like to be at that party, yeah, man, I mean,
13:09
Speaker 1: like I I loved seeing pictures like that for that
13:11
Speaker 1: magic funny that party was and probably pretty great. Great
13:16
Speaker 1: either that or else I'd just be like I, I'd
13:18
Speaker 1: just be too nervous and socially anxious to talk to
13:21
Speaker 1: anybody and wouldn't have a good time at all. Well,
13:24
Speaker 1: the first, um, since we're on the sidetrack, the first
13:27
Speaker 1: kind of really famous hang I had like that was
13:30
Speaker 1: I think one of my first Max Fun cons when
13:32
Speaker 1: I was sitting in a room with basically the original
13:36
Speaker 1: Upright Citizen's Brigade songs Amy Poehler and Andy Richter and
13:40
Speaker 1: Andy Daily and all these comedy heroes, and I just
13:43
Speaker 1: I was so afraid to even speak, but I was
13:46
Speaker 1: saying jokes in my head. And then two times I
13:50
Speaker 1: said a joke in my head and Andy Richter said
13:53
Speaker 1: one of them, and another I think it was Matt
13:56
Speaker 1: Waltz said another that was basically my joke. And I
13:59
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna start talking nice and I did,
14:03
Speaker 1: and you did. Did you get applause? No? But they
14:05
Speaker 1: didn't all turn around and look at me and go
14:07
Speaker 1: who's this guy like I thought they would, just like, Oh,
14:10
Speaker 1: we're all just people. And did they make you an
14:13
Speaker 1: honorary a member of the Upright Citizens per game? No?
14:17
Speaker 1: Did you get a T shirt? I did get a
14:19
Speaker 1: T shirt? Okay, I stole a T shirt. That's good.
14:23
Speaker 1: Should we take a break? I think we should take
14:25
Speaker 1: a break. All right, we need to get back on track,
14:27
Speaker 1: and we're going to take a break and talk about
14:29
Speaker 1: the types of modern hydro power right after this. Okay,
15:03
Speaker 1: Chuck so Um like you said a minute ago that
15:06
Speaker 1: like flowing water has a lot of energy to it.
15:09
Speaker 1: I found a couple of stats that I've just got
15:11
Speaker 1: to share with everybody. Okay, let's let's hear it. Water
15:16
Speaker 1: flowing at four miles an hour, just four. It is
15:21
Speaker 1: very slow, like you you yawn basically when you see that,
15:25
Speaker 1: it's like a walking pace. It can move a five
15:29
Speaker 1: foot diameter boulder. Okay, Okay, seven miles prior has the
15:36
Speaker 1: same force as an e F five tornado. And water
15:41
Speaker 1: water flowing at twenty five miles prior has a pressure
15:44
Speaker 1: equivalent of wind that's blowing at seven hundred and ninety
15:48
Speaker 1: miles per hour, faster than the speed of sound. So
15:52
Speaker 1: there's a tremendous amount of kinetic energy and flowing water UM.
15:57
Speaker 1: And we have figured out over time how to maximize
16:02
Speaker 1: that um. Like you said, the water wheel design is
16:06
Speaker 1: basically like what we're what we're working with still today,
16:09
Speaker 1: but we've refined it so much that now we're producing
16:12
Speaker 1: these amazing turbines that spin super fast, and they're designed
16:16
Speaker 1: to like to to direct water and just the right way,
16:20
Speaker 1: or water is supposed to go around them just the
16:22
Speaker 1: right way, or drop on them. Or shoot from the
16:25
Speaker 1: side and slosh around like it's on a slip in
16:29
Speaker 1: side or something. And um, we've come up with a
16:32
Speaker 1: lot of turbine designs basically, I guess is what I'm
16:35
Speaker 1: trying to say that that have really improved on the
16:37
Speaker 1: water wheel. Yeah, those bulb types are pretty cool. Uh.
16:41
Speaker 1: That's those are watertight and it's basically an aerodynamic chamber
16:45
Speaker 1: that's gonna you know, I talked earlier about when that
16:48
Speaker 1: water channel narrows, how much more forceful it gets, And
16:51
Speaker 1: that's what they do in this case. They focus and
16:53
Speaker 1: narrow the water column and then put it to the turbine,
16:58
Speaker 1: obviously at a at a much higher rate, right, Um.
17:01
Speaker 1: And I think that is an example of an axial
17:04
Speaker 1: flow where the flow of the water is parallel to
17:07
Speaker 1: the spin of the turbine. Or no, maybe that'd be radio.
17:11
Speaker 1: I can't remember. But basically there's axial radio and mixed
17:14
Speaker 1: and most things are mixed. And a really good example
17:17
Speaker 1: of a mixed turbine is the most widely used one
17:19
Speaker 1: called the Francis turbine, which was invented by a guy
17:22
Speaker 1: named James Francis back in the nineteenth century, and it's
17:26
Speaker 1: um it's fan blades basically are adjusted to that the
17:29
Speaker 1: water spills down from above onto it, but as it
17:34
Speaker 1: hits it, the fan blades directed downward into the side,
17:38
Speaker 1: so the water ends up actually slashing around parallel to
17:41
Speaker 1: the spin of the turbine and spinning it real good,
17:46
Speaker 1: spens it real good, good Old Francis. Uh. If you're
17:51
Speaker 1: talking about hydro electricity these days, Um, you're gonna spin
17:55
Speaker 1: that turbine. Axl's gonna spin the turbine, and it's attached
17:58
Speaker 1: to a set of super powerful magnets that are turning
18:02
Speaker 1: inside a copper coil, and that movement of the magnets
18:06
Speaker 1: is going to knock those electrons loose and get those
18:08
Speaker 1: electrons flowing, and then all of a sudden, those electrons
18:12
Speaker 1: flowing through the copper is a current. It's electrical current,
18:15
Speaker 1: and then they pressurize that into a really densely packed
18:19
Speaker 1: a C current that's really slow moving. And we talked about,
18:22
Speaker 1: you know, the invention of a C current, how that
18:24
Speaker 1: means you can just take it really really far away
18:27
Speaker 1: and still use it without losing a lot of energy,
18:29
Speaker 1: which is great because you can dump it into the
18:31
Speaker 1: electrical grid and say you were once water, now you
18:35
Speaker 1: are electricity, yeah, which is which is pretty cool. Like
18:38
Speaker 1: a lot of our power actually started out as flowing water.
18:41
Speaker 1: I'd love that idea to me to um, but it
18:44
Speaker 1: goes to show like we really haven't changed that water
18:47
Speaker 1: wheel designed very much. Instead of a grinding wheel or
18:50
Speaker 1: a bellows, we now just have some magnets that are
18:53
Speaker 1: attached to the turbine and they spin around inside of
18:56
Speaker 1: that that coil. And that's that's that. I mean, like
18:59
Speaker 1: it's I know we talked about it in our episode
19:01
Speaker 1: on electricity, UM, but I'm still to this day amazed
19:05
Speaker 1: that that's it's just so primitive, but it will. It works,
19:08
Speaker 1: So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Basically is
19:11
Speaker 1: the big motto of the electrical production industry and donkeys
19:15
Speaker 1: the world over said thank you, because now I don't
19:18
Speaker 1: have to be right hooked to a thing and walk
19:20
Speaker 1: in a circle all day long unless they're making mes cow.
19:23
Speaker 1: As we talked about in our book, you got to
19:26
Speaker 1: use the traditional donkey. That's right. I hope they're well
19:29
Speaker 1: taken care of. I am sure they are. If you yeah,
19:32
Speaker 1: if you have a donkey that makes mes cow for you,
19:34
Speaker 1: I'll bet you treat it really nice. Uh So. There
19:37
Speaker 1: are four main categories of hydro electric power plants these days.
19:42
Speaker 1: The first one, the impoundment, is the one you kind
19:44
Speaker 1: of think of when you think of like the Hoover Dam. Um,
19:47
Speaker 1: this water is impounded. They stop that flow. It's impounded
19:52
Speaker 1: in a big reservoir. They release it through these gates,
19:55
Speaker 1: through these tunnels called pin stocks that we talked a
19:58
Speaker 1: lot about in the Hoover Dam episode. And it's gonna
20:02
Speaker 1: just you know, they're using gravity basically to make water
20:05
Speaker 1: fall and gain all this turn all that potential energy
20:09
Speaker 1: into um whatever. The other kind of energy is the
20:14
Speaker 1: energy yeah, yeah, And so empowerment schemes make use of
20:18
Speaker 1: what's called the hydraulic head, which is basically the height
20:21
Speaker 1: of the drop from say the gates where the water
20:25
Speaker 1: enters the pen stock to the point where that water
20:28
Speaker 1: hits the turbine. And the higher the head, the higher
20:31
Speaker 1: the drop, the more energy you can get out of
20:34
Speaker 1: the water, the faster it makes the turbines spin. So
20:38
Speaker 1: that's why that's why dams are just so damn high
20:41
Speaker 1: and tall, because they have a really high hydraulic head
20:44
Speaker 1: and you can just get a lot more electricity a
20:47
Speaker 1: lot more kinetic energy out of that falling water. Um.
20:51
Speaker 1: But as we'll see, that's actually kind of a problem,
20:53
Speaker 1: the fact that the high head um hydro power is
20:58
Speaker 1: basically the state of the art. We need to advance
21:00
Speaker 1: past that just a little, a little taste, a little
21:03
Speaker 1: foreshadowing right there. That's right. Then you've got I think
21:07
Speaker 1: my favorite one, which is diversion or the run of
21:11
Speaker 1: river hydro power, which is, um, this is using water
21:16
Speaker 1: that's already flowing. You got a river that's flowing, and
21:18
Speaker 1: someone came along and said, hey, this river's got some
21:21
Speaker 1: good action. Why don't we just divert some of this
21:24
Speaker 1: and channel it off to the side and create some
21:26
Speaker 1: electricity that way and then just let that water dump
21:29
Speaker 1: back in and do its thing on downstream. Yeah, and
21:32
Speaker 1: so um, some of them do just divert some of
21:35
Speaker 1: the river to produce electrical power. Some like just stick
21:39
Speaker 1: a whole plant in the river. But the key here
21:43
Speaker 1: is is that they're not like you said, They're not
21:45
Speaker 1: like trying to keep the water blocked up behind a dam.
21:48
Speaker 1: But there's still probably a drop because again, this hydraulic
21:51
Speaker 1: head is basically the key to hydroelectric power. Generation right now.
21:56
Speaker 1: I think the conduit, which is a subtype of the
21:59
Speaker 1: diversion and conduit or canal, is pretty neat too, because
22:03
Speaker 1: basically they use these water pipes that may be part
22:06
Speaker 1: of a big irrigation system or some other kind of
22:08
Speaker 1: water project. You know, like we might as well stick
22:10
Speaker 1: at turbine in that thing, because we're diverting that water
22:13
Speaker 1: through a pipe anyway, right, so it might as well
22:16
Speaker 1: just capture some of the energy as it's passing by.
22:20
Speaker 1: I think that's a spectacular idea. Um. So those that's like,
22:24
Speaker 1: you've got impoundment diversion, and then another type is called
22:27
Speaker 1: pump storage, and pump storage is very much like impoundment.
22:30
Speaker 1: There's like an upper reservoir and pen stocks and you
22:33
Speaker 1: let the water flow through past the turbine and you
22:35
Speaker 1: generate electricity. But unlike impoundment, where when the water exits
22:40
Speaker 1: it just goes downstream and keeps flowing. It's like, what
22:43
Speaker 1: the hell just happened? Um, you actually capture the water.
22:47
Speaker 1: I have to say, I've said damn in hell in
22:49
Speaker 1: this episode, and I I'm really pushing the envelope. If
22:52
Speaker 1: you ask me, I feel like Bart Simpson, Well, you
22:54
Speaker 1: said damn high. I took it to mean d a
22:57
Speaker 1: m high literally, but yeah, you're in trouble. You're saying
23:00
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Um so uh oh. In pump storage,
23:05
Speaker 1: rather than letting the water just exit and flow down river,
23:08
Speaker 1: there's a lower reservoir too that captures the water and
23:11
Speaker 1: keeps it from flowing out and then um that's what
23:14
Speaker 1: you do. You let the water flow from upper to
23:17
Speaker 1: lower during peak electricity hours or peak demand, so you
23:20
Speaker 1: can produce electricity, and then when it's not uh peak demand,
23:25
Speaker 1: people don't need as much electricity. You can use some
23:28
Speaker 1: of that electricity that you've generated to pump the water
23:31
Speaker 1: from the lower reservoir back up to the upper reservoir,
23:34
Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. It makes it basically like a
23:36
Speaker 1: rechargeable battery. It's pretty cool. We um spend a lot
23:40
Speaker 1: of time on Lake Sinclair here in Georgia, and the
23:44
Speaker 1: dam is very close to where we are. There's two damns,
23:46
Speaker 1: one at the north end, one at the south end,
23:48
Speaker 1: and we go to the north end one and it's
23:50
Speaker 1: just fun to go up there and watch when it's
23:53
Speaker 1: going through. It's uh, I guess when they're releasing the
23:56
Speaker 1: most water because it's just crazy. Like the water in
24:00
Speaker 1: front of it is really choppy, but it's not going
24:03
Speaker 1: in any sort of pattern. It's just you'll see a
24:05
Speaker 1: big swirling pool to your right, then another one in
24:08
Speaker 1: front of you, and like jet skis and boats are
24:11
Speaker 1: kind of like trying to fight against the current to
24:13
Speaker 1: get close and then get pushed back. It's it's it's
24:16
Speaker 1: really uh. I mean, I thought I was about to
24:19
Speaker 1: say violent, but it's just uh. But it's not loud,
24:23
Speaker 1: so it doesn't seem violent. But it's churning that water
24:26
Speaker 1: up and I think fish because the birds go crazy
24:28
Speaker 1: when this is going on. Manh Yeah, it sounds like
24:31
Speaker 1: utter chaos. It's it is, but it's quiet chaos. Oh
24:35
Speaker 1: is it quiet? To me? In my head it sounded
24:38
Speaker 1: like really loud and whoshy and everything. No, it's not
24:41
Speaker 1: really whishy. You just see the water churning and moving
24:43
Speaker 1: and it's it's pretty cool. Why is it that if
24:47
Speaker 1: there's if there's a chance to do something dumb, somebody
24:50
Speaker 1: on a jet skis going to try it. Have you
24:52
Speaker 1: ever noticed Yeah, jet ski I don't know. Jet ski
24:56
Speaker 1: people are. They're different. There's certain breed they got, they
25:00
Speaker 1: got a little bit of daredevil into my guess they do.
25:03
Speaker 1: I mean, some of those things are crazy. They go
25:04
Speaker 1: like eighty miles an hour, and that's not safe. No,
25:06
Speaker 1: it's not. Um. One of the other last things about
25:09
Speaker 1: pump storage, Chuck, is that they've figured out and I
25:12
Speaker 1: think I feel like we've talked about this before. I
25:14
Speaker 1: mentioned it that a really good thing to do with
25:16
Speaker 1: a pump storage hydro electric plant is to actually use
25:20
Speaker 1: excess energy from wind and solar that say you can't
25:24
Speaker 1: store anywhere. You use that to pump the water back
25:28
Speaker 1: up to the upper reservoir. And it's basically like again
25:31
Speaker 1: recharging a battery using wind or solar, So you could
25:34
Speaker 1: conceivably power your whole pump storage hydro electric plant um
25:39
Speaker 1: using nothing but renewable resources. That's amazing. Yeah, I like
25:43
Speaker 1: that stuff. I love like ecology almost as much as
25:46
Speaker 1: Earth science because you know, it ties into it so much.
25:49
Speaker 1: Just gonna cousins. Uh. Then finally have marine hydro kinetics,
25:54
Speaker 1: which we talked about. Do you remember the name of
25:57
Speaker 1: the episode Can Oceans Power the World From? And that
26:02
Speaker 1: is using ocean currents and waves and tidal currents. I
26:06
Speaker 1: wondered if any of the Great Lakes could produce enough
26:08
Speaker 1: of a current to be useful or is it only ocean. No.
26:12
Speaker 1: I think anywhere that has any kind of wave action,
26:15
Speaker 1: title action or currents, you could totally you could totally
26:19
Speaker 1: make use of it. And apparently there's there's tides and
26:22
Speaker 1: currents and in the Great Lakes. I had no idea,
26:25
Speaker 1: but I remember somebody saying that recently. I just remember
26:29
Speaker 1: learning that when I saw Ferris Bueller in high school
26:32
Speaker 1: and there's that scene by, uh, what's the great lake
26:36
Speaker 1: there in Chicago? Was at like Michigan, I think superior, superior. Boy,
26:40
Speaker 1: we're getting crushed right now. I think let's just name
26:43
Speaker 1: them all. It could be eerie. Maybe here on Ontario
26:47
Speaker 1: one of those. It's not Ontario. Um, but I just
26:50
Speaker 1: remember seeing that that scene by the lake and all
26:53
Speaker 1: those waves and stuff, and I was like, wait a minute.
26:55
Speaker 1: I thought they're in Chicago, Where the heck are they?
26:57
Speaker 1: And someone said, no, that's that's a great lake and
27:00
Speaker 1: it has it can look like the ocean like that,
27:03
Speaker 1: And I mean, now, I remember I recall back to
27:07
Speaker 1: my boyhood when I would play in the lake and
27:09
Speaker 1: I guess there would be waves, but it never occurred.
27:12
Speaker 1: To me that they just shouldn't be there, that they
27:14
Speaker 1: were freaks of nature. What lake did you go to? Erie? Okay,
27:18
Speaker 1: are you sure about that? I'm positive? Okay. Um, So
27:24
Speaker 1: with the marine hydrogenetics they can and you should go
27:27
Speaker 1: back and listen to that episode. It's really good. But
27:30
Speaker 1: one type is if they build it, you know, a
27:33
Speaker 1: plant right along the shore there and it's got that
27:36
Speaker 1: turbine at the top and see water flows in and out,
27:39
Speaker 1: and they use that wave action in the title movement,
27:42
Speaker 1: uh coming and going to run that turbine, spinning that turbine.
27:46
Speaker 1: It all goes back to spinning that wheel. Yeah. I
27:49
Speaker 1: actually saw there was a University of Florida's study. UM
27:52
Speaker 1: that's that said Florida alone could probably produce ten gigawatts
27:58
Speaker 1: of electricity from UM marine hydro kinetic schemes alone, and
28:04
Speaker 1: which is pretty substantial because all of the UM hydro
28:07
Speaker 1: electric output in the entire United States right now is
28:10
Speaker 1: thirteen gig a lot. So that'd be a pretty big
28:12
Speaker 1: addition actually if they could figure out how to do it.
28:15
Speaker 1: You know, I thought of another musician from Gainesville, Florida,
28:19
Speaker 1: the other day when I was listening to them, Stephen Stills, like,
28:22
Speaker 1: I can't believe it forgot Steven Stills. Steve Stills, little
28:26
Speaker 1: Stevie Stills is from which uh yeah, he's one of
28:32
Speaker 1: my favorites too. Uh out of all of the Crosby,
28:36
Speaker 1: Stills and Nash people are just in general mm hmm,
28:41
Speaker 1: well yeah, I think out of all of I mean,
28:42
Speaker 1: Neil Young is the king, obviously, but Stephen Stills was
28:46
Speaker 1: in Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young, and he also had
28:49
Speaker 1: this great band that did a one off record band
28:52
Speaker 1: called Manassas that was awesome. Okay, well what about out
28:56
Speaker 1: of Emerson Lincoln Palmer. I mean, if you're not a
29:00
Speaker 1: a lake Man, then I don't know what you're doing
29:03
Speaker 1: in life? What about Bachman Turner? Overdrive? You gotta go
29:06
Speaker 1: with Overdrive? Okay, yeah, totally Overdrive was he was awesome. Sure, um,
29:12
Speaker 1: you you want to take a second break yet? I
29:15
Speaker 1: think so, I think that is our new queue and
29:17
Speaker 1: I get really off track to stop the show and
29:19
Speaker 1: then pick up again with the topic and new queue.
29:23
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back, everybody. We got to
29:25
Speaker 1: sort ourselves out. Okay. So if you're not just sorry
29:59
Speaker 1: eyed over hydro power right now, you clearly haven't been
30:01
Speaker 1: paying attention to this episode, like we're mad at hydro
30:05
Speaker 1: power is amazing, Like, um, it uses water is fuel, right,
30:08
Speaker 1: and water is a renewable resources. We're never going to
30:11
Speaker 1: run out of it thanks to the hydrologic cycle, which
30:14
Speaker 1: um replenishes the Earth's water all the time. The fact
30:18
Speaker 1: that rivers flow thanks to the force of gravity, um,
30:22
Speaker 1: and the rains swell their their flow, and um it
30:27
Speaker 1: happens seasonally every season. You can kind of set your
30:30
Speaker 1: watch by. It's pretty amazing stuff. Um. And then the
30:33
Speaker 1: other fact that when we run this water, when we
30:37
Speaker 1: build like hydroelectric plants on rivers and things like that,
30:41
Speaker 1: when we use it as fuel, it doesn't exhaust the water,
30:44
Speaker 1: Like the water just loses a little bit of its
30:47
Speaker 1: kinetic energy for a second then but when it flows
30:49
Speaker 1: out the other side, it regains it rather quickly. You know,
30:53
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to be replenished. Um, it's not wasted,
30:56
Speaker 1: like you just stole a little bit of its kinetic
30:59
Speaker 1: energy and used it for something else than the river
31:01
Speaker 1: was like whatever, I got it right back. So it's
31:04
Speaker 1: a pretty amazing green source of energy. Um. You can
31:09
Speaker 1: understand why people have been so so cookie for it
31:11
Speaker 1: for a while. Plus it doesn't um expend any greenhouse
31:14
Speaker 1: gases in its production. Right, Yeah, if you hate greenhouse gasses,
31:18
Speaker 1: then you love hydro electric power because along with solar, uh,
31:25
Speaker 1: nuclear and wind, um it has no emissions. And we've
31:29
Speaker 1: talked about nuclear there are some problems there, and you
31:32
Speaker 1: know wind and solar is great too. There's nothing that's perfect.
31:37
Speaker 1: There is a byproduct by producing solar panels and wind turbines,
31:41
Speaker 1: and you know there's ecological impacts with any type of
31:45
Speaker 1: energy production. UM, it's all about just making efforts to
31:49
Speaker 1: minimize those as much as possible, right. Um. The other
31:54
Speaker 1: thing about hydro electric power is that, UM there it's
32:00
Speaker 1: just simpler. Like when we're talking about thermal there's a
32:03
Speaker 1: couple of extraditional steps, which is like loading the fuel,
32:06
Speaker 1: lighting the fuel, basically burning to create steam to spin
32:10
Speaker 1: the turbine. This is just water passing by that spins
32:13
Speaker 1: the turbine. So because there's fewer steps and there's fewer
32:17
Speaker 1: machine or less machinery involved, UM, it's a it's a
32:20
Speaker 1: simpler technology, which means that ultimately, especially if you look
32:24
Speaker 1: at the lifespan of a hydro electric plant. UM, over
32:27
Speaker 1: time it's much more cost effective than a thermal power
32:31
Speaker 1: plant for sure. It's just again it costs a lot
32:34
Speaker 1: more upfront to build one, but when they build them,
32:38
Speaker 1: they usually build them to last usually decades longer than
32:41
Speaker 1: a thermal power plant too. Yeah, and then if you're
32:45
Speaker 1: in the in the business of creating power, you kind
32:49
Speaker 1: of love hydro electric power because it's instantaneous. Um. If
32:53
Speaker 1: demand goes up, you can just spin that turbine faster
32:57
Speaker 1: and allow more water to flow through, if you know.
33:00
Speaker 1: Sometimes it goes dormant and you turn it off, but
33:02
Speaker 1: if you need power, just get it going again. And
33:05
Speaker 1: it's not like it takes it doesn't have to heat
33:07
Speaker 1: up or anything. You're like, you're producing power and electricity
33:10
Speaker 1: the minute that things starts spinning. Yeah. Well, actually there's UM,
33:13
Speaker 1: there's measurements of the ramp up time. And for some
33:16
Speaker 1: kinds of hydro electric power, it's less than a minute,
33:20
Speaker 1: about thirty seconds from zero to producing all the power.
33:23
Speaker 1: You're you're like, it's peak out power output. Um. Other
33:27
Speaker 1: kinds are five minutes. So I saw anywhere from thirty
33:29
Speaker 1: seconds to five minutes ramp up time. For things like
33:31
Speaker 1: coal and oil, it can take half a day to
33:35
Speaker 1: a couple of days from starting from scratch to full power. Um.
33:41
Speaker 1: So that's a huge, huge bonuses if you're um an
33:45
Speaker 1: energy producer, you know. Yeah, So you know, we've kind
33:49
Speaker 1: of put a pin in the problems. And like I
33:51
Speaker 1: said a second ago, there is no type of power
33:54
Speaker 1: production that is perfect. Um. Everything's going to have some
33:57
Speaker 1: sort of impact on the environment. And in a case
34:00
Speaker 1: of hydro electric power, there are a few ways. And
34:03
Speaker 1: it's funny, you know, it sounds so great, but then
34:05
Speaker 1: when you start kind of reading through these things, it's
34:08
Speaker 1: you know, some of the air is let out of
34:10
Speaker 1: the balloon a little bit. But we have to cover
34:12
Speaker 1: this stuff. Um, when you're gonna build a big reservoir
34:15
Speaker 1: for a dam, there's gonna be a lot of impact
34:17
Speaker 1: on the environment. Um. Everything above that used to be
34:21
Speaker 1: shoreline and dry or maybe even marshy or forest land
34:26
Speaker 1: is gonna be an aquatic ecosystem pretty quickly, within about
34:29
Speaker 1: a year. And there's a lot of plants and animals
34:32
Speaker 1: and insects and reptiles and fish and birds that live
34:36
Speaker 1: in that area, and some of them can adapt, some
34:39
Speaker 1: of them move along and find a new home, and
34:42
Speaker 1: sadly some of them die out and they don't have
34:44
Speaker 1: a chance to relocate or adapt. Yeah. There, anytime they
34:48
Speaker 1: build a big damn project, you're probably going to find
34:51
Speaker 1: within uh a year, two or a handful reports of
34:56
Speaker 1: entire species that have gone extinct because of that damn project.
35:01
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have kind of woken up
35:03
Speaker 1: over the last few decades, especially as UM as the
35:06
Speaker 1: world has become much more environmentally conscious since the seventies,
35:10
Speaker 1: um and said, whoa, this is this is a big
35:13
Speaker 1: deal here, actually um and hydro power, I think has
35:16
Speaker 1: kind of gotten away with trading on it. Yeah special
35:23
Speaker 1: special murder, interspecial murder UM, but hydro has gotten gotten
35:27
Speaker 1: away by trading on it's kind of green reputation. And
35:30
Speaker 1: finally people started calling it out and saying like, this
35:33
Speaker 1: is not acceptable. We have to figure out a better way.
35:35
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what I was referring to. We're
35:37
Speaker 1: not just kind of like that is almost entirely what
35:40
Speaker 1: I was referring to, where hydro um and we'll talk
35:45
Speaker 1: about the future in a second, but uh, it's at
35:47
Speaker 1: this point where it's like, how can we do this
35:49
Speaker 1: so that because this is an amazing green, renewable energy source,
35:54
Speaker 1: but it's also having devastating environmental impacts. So we've got
35:58
Speaker 1: to figure this out so we can keep doinging this,
36:00
Speaker 1: but we've got to do it without you know, wiping
36:03
Speaker 1: out entire species every time we build a new dam. Yeah, totally. Um.
36:07
Speaker 1: The other thing that can happen beyond the animals that
36:10
Speaker 1: did mention plants, but all that above water vegetation up
36:13
Speaker 1: there is going to be flooded, and that you know
36:16
Speaker 1: that those plants lived in certain kinds of conditions that
36:19
Speaker 1: wasn't um a lake bottom basically, and it's gonna decompose.
36:23
Speaker 1: It's gonna release methane and CEO two into the atmosphere
36:27
Speaker 1: during those drought periods when that reservoir evaporates, and then
36:31
Speaker 1: you've got all the downstream problems to stuff that was um.
36:35
Speaker 1: You know, instead of flooding these downstream ecosystems, it's kind
36:39
Speaker 1: of like the opposite of what's going on up top.
36:41
Speaker 1: They're gonna dry up and all those all that nutrient
36:44
Speaker 1: rich silt that's deposited downstream as the river flows uh
36:50
Speaker 1: is blocked by the dams, and that's gonna build up
36:52
Speaker 1: in the reservoir, causing problems for the dam itself and uh,
36:56
Speaker 1: nutrient depletion downstream. So you know, it's kind of messing
36:59
Speaker 1: up both sides. Yeah, Um, and so even even for
37:03
Speaker 1: aquatic animals, it's it's a pretty big problem. Um, just
37:09
Speaker 1: building a dam is an obstacle for the fish that
37:14
Speaker 1: used to live there. So fish that um, you know,
37:17
Speaker 1: used to swim upstream past where that dam is now
37:20
Speaker 1: located to its breeding grounds and spawning grounds. Um, they
37:24
Speaker 1: have a problem. They have a big problem getting around,
37:26
Speaker 1: and the hydro industry is looked into all sorts of
37:29
Speaker 1: different ways to help these fish get around more easily.
37:32
Speaker 1: So there's fish diversion channels, there's fish ladders, basically a
37:36
Speaker 1: system of locks that the fish are meant to climb. Um.
37:40
Speaker 1: You know, I think we talked about in the Hoover
37:43
Speaker 1: Damn episode that there's like fish air drops, trucking fish,
37:47
Speaker 1: fish cannons, all sorts of weird stuff. None of them
37:51
Speaker 1: none of them hold a candle to unobstructed treat of
37:56
Speaker 1: a river, Like that's what you want. So that's another
37:59
Speaker 1: channel lenge that's facing the hydro electric production industry. Is Okay,
38:04
Speaker 1: like basically anything we do is going to negatively impact
38:08
Speaker 1: the fish population, so that's a that's a big challenge
38:11
Speaker 1: for them as well. A unobstructed river, though, is not
38:15
Speaker 1: nearly as fun as a fish cannon. No, I don't
38:18
Speaker 1: know about for the fish, but for you know, jet
38:21
Speaker 1: skiers hanging out watching them get shot upstream. I think
38:24
Speaker 1: we I think we did research into fish cannons and
38:26
Speaker 1: they're they're okay, right, yeah, but I mean you've it's
38:29
Speaker 1: got to scare the yeah, you know, I don't know.
38:34
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm sure some of them do the
38:37
Speaker 1: fish equivalent of jet skiers being shot. Come on, Brose,
38:43
Speaker 1: send me through again. Uh. There are also humans that
38:48
Speaker 1: live in communities that live near where these dams are built,
38:51
Speaker 1: and they will get um what's it called when you
38:55
Speaker 1: have to force someone out of a place displaced? Yeah,
38:59
Speaker 1: but evicted the the actual moved along? Oh no, what
39:04
Speaker 1: do you call it that? When the government steps in
39:06
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we gotta move your house because we're
39:08
Speaker 1: gonna build a school eminent domain. Yes, okay, Well they
39:11
Speaker 1: will come through and say, I'm sorry, community, but we're
39:14
Speaker 1: gonna build a damn here. You're gonna leave. Here's some
39:17
Speaker 1: money maybe to help you out with this, but you
39:20
Speaker 1: don't have a choice. We're gonna flood. And in fact,
39:23
Speaker 1: all the lakes in Georgia are man made power producing lakes,
39:27
Speaker 1: and there were once communities in some of these places,
39:29
Speaker 1: and there are stories of cars and houses at the
39:32
Speaker 1: bottoms of some of these lakes. Yeah, which is just
39:35
Speaker 1: creeps filled to me. Man. I love looking at pictures
39:38
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff and thinking about it. But yeah,
39:40
Speaker 1: you know I've told you before, being in, you know,
39:43
Speaker 1: any of the Georgia lakes, I always am like, what
39:46
Speaker 1: is beneath me right now? You know, it's awesome. It's
39:48
Speaker 1: thrilling but terrifying at the same time, like being on
39:51
Speaker 1: a jet ski uh huh. And that's without even counting
39:55
Speaker 1: the catfish that are the scariest creatures on the that's right,
39:58
Speaker 1: or the gar Good lord, man, I saw a car
40:01
Speaker 1: last summer that I had never seen one in person before.
40:05
Speaker 1: It looks prehistoric, it really does. Yeah, They're they're very
40:09
Speaker 1: scary looking and they'll they'll eat absolutely anything. You can
40:12
Speaker 1: have a guard problem real quick. Uh So, the people
40:16
Speaker 1: that have been displaced, I think the World Commission on
40:18
Speaker 1: Damn's did a study and they estimated in the year
40:21
Speaker 1: two thousand that damn said physically displaced between forty and
40:25
Speaker 1: eighty million people all around the world. Yeah, that's so
40:29
Speaker 1: many people. I mean, it's just like you said, like, sorry,
40:33
Speaker 1: you have to move. You don't like this is this
40:36
Speaker 1: is going to be underwater, you know, very soon. Um.
40:40
Speaker 1: And then when you build the damn, even once you settle,
40:43
Speaker 1: resettle the people who used to live in what's now
40:46
Speaker 1: a reservoir. Um, the people downstream are are under constant
40:52
Speaker 1: threat of the damn failing. When that happens, and it happens,
40:56
Speaker 1: whole towns get flooded out, lots of people can die.
41:00
Speaker 1: I millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of
41:03
Speaker 1: damage is done so um. And it's not like it's
41:06
Speaker 1: not like that's just a remote possibility. Apparently. As of
41:12
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, the American Society for Civil Engineers identified
41:17
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand, six hundred dams just in the United States
41:23
Speaker 1: that posed the highest hazard potential, the most critical for failure. UM.
41:29
Speaker 1: Fifteen thousand dams right now are really menacing, like a
41:36
Speaker 1: a guy in a jet skis circling you. That level
41:38
Speaker 1: of menacing. Yeah, and I think there was one too
41:41
Speaker 1: many times. I think was that three or four? That
41:44
Speaker 1: was like seven? Oh well, I was about to say
41:46
Speaker 1: three is a magic numbers, so maybe six is twice
41:48
Speaker 1: as good, but yeah, sevens too much. I think they're
41:52
Speaker 1: about ninety thousand dams in the US, so that's fifteen
41:56
Speaker 1: thousand of those ninety thousands are high hazard. And um,
42:00
Speaker 1: you know, when you hear about government and politics, you'll
42:03
Speaker 1: often hear uh talk of like, hey, the one thing
42:07
Speaker 1: we can agree on, we've got to get together on
42:08
Speaker 1: as infrastructure. This is what they're talking about, um, roads
42:12
Speaker 1: and bridges and stuff like that. But part of it
42:14
Speaker 1: is damns, And like, you know, one of the ideas
42:17
Speaker 1: of moving forward is let's get in there. Let's I
42:21
Speaker 1: think only twenty dred of the ninety thousand dams in
42:23
Speaker 1: the US even produce electricity. So one of the ideas
42:27
Speaker 1: is let's get in there, let's shore these things up,
42:30
Speaker 1: Let's take as many of them as possible that aren't
42:32
Speaker 1: producing electricity since they're already there anyway, and retrofit them
42:36
Speaker 1: to produce electricity, and they'll be safer and actually be
42:40
Speaker 1: doing something other than just being a damn yeah, which
42:44
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like that's that's just the lowest hanging
42:47
Speaker 1: fruit you can think of right there. It's like these
42:49
Speaker 1: damns already had their environmental impact decades ago, so it's
42:55
Speaker 1: it's not as bad as you know, um, you might
42:58
Speaker 1: as well like put into good use. And it's certainly
43:01
Speaker 1: preferable to to building another dam to generate power. It's like,
43:06
Speaker 1: what are you even doing, Like, don't do that. Wait
43:08
Speaker 1: until all of the damns that um needs shoring up
43:12
Speaker 1: anyway are producing electrical power, then maybe we can look
43:16
Speaker 1: into more damn projects. Apparently, that is not how the
43:18
Speaker 1: industry goes UM. Like I said, they kind of seem
43:21
Speaker 1: to have traded on their you know, green energy um
43:25
Speaker 1: uh image. But they're they're an energy sector. They're part
43:31
Speaker 1: of the energy sector, and they do things they don't like,
43:34
Speaker 1: things like government regulation, and they don't like things like, um,
43:37
Speaker 1: you know, tribes or local governments having a say in
43:41
Speaker 1: their licensing and all that stuff, so they lobby against
43:43
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. They're you know, their corporations. So um,
43:47
Speaker 1: it's a real problem in the in the industry that
43:50
Speaker 1: right now they seem to be largely in favor of
43:54
Speaker 1: pressing back against environmental regulations or regulations that less than
43:59
Speaker 1: the industry impact rather than saying yeah, you know, like
44:02
Speaker 1: we really need to we really need to figure out
44:04
Speaker 1: how to do this the right way. They're just trying
44:06
Speaker 1: to squeeze as many nickels as they can out before
44:09
Speaker 1: um they they are forced to do it the right way. Yeah,
44:13
Speaker 1: this one in Turkey sounds like a real nasty one.
44:17
Speaker 1: They're building on the Tigris. It's gonna flood ninety miles
44:20
Speaker 1: of the river plus a hundred and fifty miles of tributaries. Um,
44:24
Speaker 1: big time damage to the ecosystems there. And we're talking
44:28
Speaker 1: ancient archaeological sites that are going to be wiped out,
44:31
Speaker 1: people displaced. Uh. And a lot of people in the
44:34
Speaker 1: international community have said, hey, uh, Turkey, why don't you
44:38
Speaker 1: think about some different ways to do this, And Turkey said, no,
44:41
Speaker 1: this is what we're doing. Uh, We're we're gonna push
44:45
Speaker 1: forward with this. We have another one on the Euphrates
44:48
Speaker 1: that has reduced waterflow UM to Iraq to its south
44:52
Speaker 1: by this caused a loss of sixty acres of arable
44:57
Speaker 1: land every year. Yeah, it's just such an astounding figure.
45:02
Speaker 1: It's like, how is there any any land left? You know?
45:06
Speaker 1: So there are fortunately a lot of people in the
45:08
Speaker 1: industry who are, like the writings on the wall, like
45:10
Speaker 1: this is just too good of an energy source to stop,
45:13
Speaker 1: but it's having too big of an environmental impact to
45:16
Speaker 1: just keep going for in this direction, so they're trying
45:18
Speaker 1: to find ways to make it better. UM. One of
45:21
Speaker 1: the inventions that I saw was called movable hep um
45:24
Speaker 1: hydroelectric power plant. It's movable, uh, not that you just
45:28
Speaker 1: move it wherever you want, like whenever you want, but
45:30
Speaker 1: the actual the actual like plant itself can move up
45:35
Speaker 1: or down basically casts. That's good. UM. It moves up
45:40
Speaker 1: and down depending on how high or low the river is,
45:43
Speaker 1: which is good because you know, seasonally river river height,
45:47
Speaker 1: which has a huge impact on the amount of energy
45:49
Speaker 1: it has. UM. You know ebbs and flows basically UM.
45:53
Speaker 1: So if you can lower you know, your your your
45:57
Speaker 1: power plant in the water further when the waters um low,
46:01
Speaker 1: or raise it when it's high, you can also make
46:03
Speaker 1: it easier for fish to go around above or under unobstructed,
46:09
Speaker 1: which is a huge, huge bonus too. Yeah, there's another
46:13
Speaker 1: UM couple of technologies that are very cool. One called
46:16
Speaker 1: a v l H or u l H very low
46:19
Speaker 1: head or ultra low head facilities. We talked about the
46:22
Speaker 1: head as being you know, that volume of water plus
46:26
Speaker 1: the amount of drop, and basically they just don't need
46:29
Speaker 1: that much of a drop, um much less of an
46:31
Speaker 1: environmental footprint. Doesn't require some big large dam or a
46:35
Speaker 1: big concrete span to create that huge drop. The fish
46:39
Speaker 1: can take that drop, which is you know, a big deal. Um.
46:42
Speaker 1: And then these low velocity turbines. I really like this idea.
46:46
Speaker 1: It's basically saying, hey, why don't we just concentrate on
46:49
Speaker 1: or one of the things we can concentrate on is
46:51
Speaker 1: making our turbines just super efficient and they don't have
46:55
Speaker 1: to spend at nine d r p m s um.
46:58
Speaker 1: They don't have to spend very fast at all. So
47:00
Speaker 1: you can produce um, you know, maybe the same amount
47:04
Speaker 1: of electricity without the need for those high pressure pin stocks. Right,
47:08
Speaker 1: so the fish can just swim right through. They're morving
47:11
Speaker 1: that slowly. UM. I think from what I saw, the
47:14
Speaker 1: reason why everybody's not just going to the them the
47:18
Speaker 1: low velocity turbines is because it's way cheaper to buy
47:23
Speaker 1: and install and operate high speed turbines. But the fact
47:28
Speaker 1: that people are thinking about this stuff and that they're
47:30
Speaker 1: coming up with new designs, and they're proving that these
47:33
Speaker 1: things can work. And we're also simultaneously, you know, publishing
47:37
Speaker 1: studies about the huge environmental impact that that this green
47:41
Speaker 1: energy has. I think that those two things combined are
47:44
Speaker 1: going to to kind of, um uh pick hydro back
47:48
Speaker 1: up and brush it off and and actually make it green,
47:51
Speaker 1: you know, in the near future. So I hope. So.
47:54
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes you gotta I know it's antithetical to
47:58
Speaker 1: capitalism and ringing every last penny out of your company,
48:01
Speaker 1: but sometimes you gotta bite the billet a little bit,
48:04
Speaker 1: invest a little bit more in something that's better for
48:06
Speaker 1: the world down the line, and still make gobs of
48:10
Speaker 1: money exactly nicely put chuck, thank you. Um, you got
48:14
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else? I don't either, man.
48:17
Speaker 1: So that's hydro power. Um, look for another supplement edition
48:22
Speaker 1: of hydro or probably somewhere down the line. Uh. And
48:26
Speaker 1: in the meantime, until then, it's time for listener mail.
48:32
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this a little statistical analysis from a listener,
48:36
Speaker 1: and this a little frightening to see how long it
48:38
Speaker 1: takes to listen to our catalog. Oh boy, Happy New
48:41
Speaker 1: Year to each of you. A huge thanks for what
48:43
Speaker 1: you guys do UH to me, as too many other fans.
48:45
Speaker 1: Your podcast never fails to bring a good laugh when
48:47
Speaker 1: I'm down, take my mind off studies when I'm feeling stressed,
48:50
Speaker 1: or to pique my interest on a fascinating topic when
48:53
Speaker 1: I'm a little bored. UH. I listened every day, which
48:56
Speaker 1: means many repeats, and I still never struggle to find
48:58
Speaker 1: an episode to keep me interest did as you may
49:01
Speaker 1: be aware, at the end of the year, UH, Spotify
49:03
Speaker 1: gives a nice wrap up on individual listening habits. I
49:07
Speaker 1: listened to over a hundred and ten thousand minutes on
49:10
Speaker 1: Spotify Music and podcasts combine. In the year, I listened
49:15
Speaker 1: to over five hundred episodes and stuff you should Know
49:17
Speaker 1: at an accumulated twenty four thousand, two hundred and fifty
49:21
Speaker 1: six minutes. My biggest streak, wow, was twenty nine episodes
49:27
Speaker 1: and one day Anthony even says Wow. I want to
49:32
Speaker 1: add I'm not often the type of person to fall
49:34
Speaker 1: asleep listening to you all, but which would account for
49:36
Speaker 1: a lot of playtime. So this is like daytime listening.
49:40
Speaker 1: It sounds like like you'd have to be on speed
49:42
Speaker 1: that day to listen to twenty nine episodes in one
49:45
Speaker 1: bank and he's not on speed. Uh. You all have
49:48
Speaker 1: helped me through some of the hardest times as well
49:49
Speaker 1: as shared and some of the greatest times, all without
49:51
Speaker 1: even knowing it. Especially this year with COVID and a
49:55
Speaker 1: very stressful semester at law school. You truly help this
49:58
Speaker 1: make make this year the best it could be. I
50:00
Speaker 1: hope you had a relaxing holiday and a great start
50:02
Speaker 1: to the new year. Chow Anthony, ps I love Speed
50:09
Speaker 1: No eight Speed. That's that's great, Anthony. I'm good luck
50:14
Speaker 1: with law school too. Um. I actually saw a couple
50:18
Speaker 1: of people who topped his his total minutes. I think
50:23
Speaker 1: somebody tweeted um, because like you can, you can tweet
50:26
Speaker 1: that really easily or post it. I saw one and
50:31
Speaker 1: I don't I'm sorry, I don't know what their name is,
50:34
Speaker 1: but um, they had like fifty five thousand minutes listen
50:37
Speaker 1: to stuff you should know the last year and that
50:40
Speaker 1: nuts man. So hats off to everybody who listens to
50:44
Speaker 1: us in general. But also if you listen to us
50:46
Speaker 1: that much, we really appreciate you and hopefully, um we
50:50
Speaker 1: never annoy you, Like hopefully one day it never just
50:53
Speaker 1: clicks and you're like, I can never listen to these
50:54
Speaker 1: guys again. Ever heard too much? You know, to be
50:59
Speaker 1: careful out there, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
51:00
Speaker 1: Everybody be careful. Uh. If you want to get in
51:03
Speaker 1: touch with this, like Anthony did, we love hearing from
51:07
Speaker 1: our friends. That means you. You can send us an
51:10
Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
51:17
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