January 28, 2021 • 51 mins
Humans have been stealing energy from flowing water for at least two thousand years. It wasn’t until the advent of electricity that things really got cookin’. All we need to do now is to work out the harmful environmental impacts of this green energy.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
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 w. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's
here too, somewhere not just in spirit, but like digitally virtually.
(00:23):
She's like, um, Johnny depp in uh um no that oh,
Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, that's what Jerry's like. I've
been singing Judas Priests all day because of this. Instead
of Turbo Lover, I'm singing hydro power. Oh that's pretty cool, man.
(00:47):
Can you give us a little couple of verses? Um
me drove power? M what comes? And failed to mention
I'm wearing my leathers okay, just the leather of us
did no shared underneath? Yeah? And and nothing else but boots?
Some buttless chaps, that's awesome. Really, are there any is
(01:08):
there any need to make any other kind of chaps?
I mean, I think they usually don't have a butt, right,
You're just expected to wear something underneath. Maybe that's what
it is, But then the whole thing just calling them
buttless chaps is superfluous. Yeah, it's redundant, right Yeah. Um,
So since we started talking about buttless chaps. Since we
coined a new term, buttless chaps. I think we're the
(01:31):
first people to ever use those two words together. Yeah,
people usually say the A word, right exactly. Uh, we're
clearly talking about hydro power, not just hydro electric power. Friends.
Hydro power. There's a lot of energy and that their water,
and we humans have have gotten pretty clever at figure
out how to extract it. Yeah, and this is something
(01:53):
that we used to use a lot more of in
this country. Um. Up until about the mid twentieth century,
we were using lots of hydro power, and it peaked
in about nineteen sixty. 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,
hydro power plants in the US about the US has
(02:15):
a bunch, but we're also tearing them down along with
Europe at a rated 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
hydro power, UM, specifically hydro electric power in a really
weird place in its history. But from all the research
(02:36):
that I'm I've done. I don't think it's going anywhere.
What I think is going on is that it's at
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 alertic actually
not that green. Does everyone just standing around look at
(02:57):
each other, going kind of you, what do you want
to do something? Yeah, it's like trying to figure out
a restaurant as a group. Oh god, that'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
gonna say they're they're usually really bossy. No. But whenever
(03:20):
it's like a a sketch fest 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 x er. I'm
happy to go anywhere. So get on your yelp or
get out your Michelin Guide or whatever your kid to
do these days. Yeah, they all carry that that paperback
(03:43):
Michelin Guide with them the Penguin Classics version of it. Right. So,
hydro power around the world, though, is pretty popular, um,
some places more than others. I think Paraguay they are
far and away the leader if you're talking about anywhere,
because they're a Norway no surprise there at about nine
(04:04):
five along with Nepal and uh Tajiki stand and I
wanted to ask you this. You haven't here that China,
Brazil in the US lead major countries, and the US
is down to six percent, so the top three. I
assume we're third at six uh yeah, which just goes
to show how much energy we put out only six
(04:26):
percent of his hydro and yet we um we're the
third in line of of um hydro electric production in
the world. China one or two uh one I believe,
and then Brazil. So Brazil and then it goes down
to six. Yeah. An't that crazy? Yeah, it's a big drop. Yeah,
But I mean that just goes to show like we
(04:47):
we've produced a lot, a lot of electricity and it's
just some of it is is um from hydro which
really boggles the mind that at one point, like you
were saying a third of our power came from hydro
electri production plants. It's just crazy, you know. Yeah, I
think it's down to about sixteen worldwide, right, yeah, five
(05:09):
years ago. Yeah, and then that actually represents a really
precipitous drop. UM. I think in too, like the mid
two thousands of the odds it was at like and
it dropped down to sixteent within maybe ten years or less. UM.
And the reason for that it's not necessarily that people
have stopped producing as much hydro power. UM, they've stopped
(05:33):
building as many new projects around the world and have
started opting instead, unfortunately for what's called thermal which is
usually UM using a fossil fuel like coal, oil, natural
gas to heat some water to produce steam to make
a turbine spin to UM to run a generator basically,
and UM, it's just cheaper, it's much more understandable. UM.
(05:57):
There's a lot of drawbacks to it, but it just
requires far less of an investment up front than building
a traditional hydro electric plant. Yeah, and we'll we'll get
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. Uh,
(06:17):
you know, stand beside any river, especially when this's got
some rapids. When you see those rapids funneling through a
small channel, it gets pretty intense, you know, uh, 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 um, of course some people
(06:38):
think the Chinese, the Han dynasty, they're always a good
bet for for leading the way. Maybe the Persians or
maybe they actually do. Have writings from the third century
BC from Philo of Byzantium, may he made a great
dough by the way he did. He was also the
guy who first um named the seven wonders of the
(06:58):
ancient world. Well, his dough one of them, right, He's like,
you gotta try it. It's the flakiest, it's so good
and flakey. But yeah, there's a i think a description
of a water wheel from from old Philo. Yeah, from
twenty three hundred or so years ago. So yeah, we've
figured out that, like you can, you can put water
(07:18):
to work. Um, we've known for a long time it
was using water as um basically a way to produce
mechanical energy, not electricity. Put a pin in that because
we're gonna get to it in like thirty five seconds.
But first we used water to um push water wheels,
(07:38):
like those charming things you've seen like a Thomas Kincaid painting.
It's one of my favorite things. They're really wonderful. I
love them. They're about as coins as anything ever has
been in the history of the world. There's just something
so tranquil about it. But if you always loved them.
When I was a kid, I remember going to Stone
Mountain Park and they had the old grist mill there,
and I think I even kind of understood that. The
(08:01):
purpose and just how I think it's simplicity always really
just hit me right where in the in the fields
it is. It's one of those things Chuck that it was.
It is a very simple idea, but it was like
it's a home run right out of the gate. Like
basically what we do to produce hydroelectricity is almost an
(08:23):
unchanged version of you know, the water wheel. Yeah, I
mean it's got fancier over the years, but it's like,
and 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,
(08:44):
to spin a turbine. Yeah, so, um, you spin this
water wheel or turbine as we'll see. Um, and there's
a that spins on an axis. Well, if you insert
an axle into that axis, it will spin the axle,
and you can attach all sorts of cool stuff to
that axle to make them spin too. Like you can
you can insert more wheels and have them pressed down
(09:06):
on stone as they rotate, so you can grind things
or put turn turn. Yeah, you can mill flour. You
can grind paper into 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,
(09:26):
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 of thousand years,
basically until the nineteenth 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
(09:49):
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 called the Craigside
like lamp, Yeah, yeah, you love lamp lamp. It's in
(10:10):
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 christer Shire or something yeah, or like
(10:32):
nothing rum Bland or something like that I just inserted
to be, So, however you pronounce it. A 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,
(10:54):
I'm gonna one up you there because we have a
hydro generator at the Wolverine Chair Company factory and we
have sixteen street lights 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 dropped crime a little bit, I would guess. So,
(11:16):
I mean, I'm sure they had like I'm sure yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm sure they had like the gas lights already, but
the electricals is true. Yeah, those gas lights, I think, Chuck.
So we You know, we talked a lot about hydro
electric power in our Hoover Damn two parter, if I
remember correctly, Yes, but I think we also might have
talked about in our Electric Chair episode. But I feel
(11:37):
like we may have misspoken and said that, Um, either Buffalo,
New York or Niagara Falls, New York was the first
city to use hydro electric power to power it's street lights.
And that's just not true. It's actually Grand Rapids Michigan. Yeah,
they were a few years later. I love how you
know a picture like this, The sketch version of this
(11:58):
is two engineers with the Niagara Falls behind them, reading
a newspaper going, hey, he says he had Grand Rapids
are using water to make light if only we had
such a means to do so, and Niagara Falls behind him.
It is just like look at me. Yeah, so um,
(12:20):
that was just an excellent nineteenth century sketch that you
just made. By the way, that's when sketch was at
its best. So I don't know, I would say the
seventies seventies sketches would be they're they're pretty tough to
to contain with. By the way, I watched that John
Belushi documentary last night, very good, and it's amazing when
(12:40):
you look at the speaking of seventies sketch, to look
at these archival photos of the like house parties and
apartment hangs where it's like Belushi and Bill Murray and
Harold Ramos and Lorraine Newman, and I mean just like
all the comedy heroes just sitting around like drinking and
(13:02):
smoking weed. Now that I endorsed that thing, but I'd
like to be at that party, yeah, man, I mean,
like I I loved seeing pictures like that for that
magic funny that party was and probably pretty great. Great
either that or else I'd just be like I, I'd
just be too nervous and socially anxious to talk to
anybody and wouldn't have a good time at all. Well,
(13:24):
the first, um, 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 Fun cons when
I was sitting in a room with basically the original
Upright Citizen's Brigade songs Amy Poehler and Andy Richter and
Andy Daily and all these comedy heroes, and I just
I was so afraid to even speak, but I was
(13:46):
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
Waltz said another that was basically my joke. And I
was like, I'm gonna start talking nice and I did,
and you did. Did you get applause? No? But they
didn't all turn around and look at me and go
(14:07):
who's this guy like I thought they would, just like, Oh,
we're all just people. And did they make you an
honorary a member of the Upright Citizens per game? No?
Did you get a T shirt? I did get a
T shirt? Okay, 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,
(14:27):
and we're going to take a break and talk about
the types of modern hydro power right after this. Okay,
(15:03):
Chuck so Um 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. Okay, let's let's hear it. Water
flowing at four miles an hour, just four. It is
very slow, like you you yawn basically when you see that,
(15:25):
it's like a walking pace. It can move a five
foot diameter boulder. Okay, Okay, seven miles prior has the
same force as an e F five tornado. And water
water flowing at twenty five miles prior has a pressure
equivalent of wind that's blowing at seven hundred and ninety
(15:48):
miles per hour, faster than the speed of sound. So
there's a tremendous amount of kinetic energy and flowing water UM.
And we have figured out over time 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,
(16:09):
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 and just the right way,
or water is 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 in
side or something. And um, we've come up with a
(16:32):
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. Uh.
That's those are watertight and it's basically an aerodynamic chamber
that's gonna you know, I talked earlier about when that
water channel narrows, how much more forceful it gets, And
that's what they do in this case. They focus and
(16:53):
narrow the water column and then put it to the turbine,
obviously at a at a much higher rate, right, Um.
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 no, maybe that'd be radio.
I can't remember. But basically there's axial radio and mixed
(17:14):
and most things are mixed. And 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 nineteenth century, and it's
um it's fan blades basically are adjusted to that the
water spills down from above onto it, but as it
hits it, the fan blades directed downward into the side,
(17:38):
so the water ends up actually slashing around parallel to
the spin of the turbine and spinning it real good,
spens it real good, good Old Francis. Uh. If you're
talking about hydro electricity these days, Um, you're gonna spin
that turbine. Axl's gonna spin the turbine, and it's attached
(17:58):
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
(18:19):
a C current that's really slow moving. And we talked about,
you know, the invention of a C 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.
(18:41):
I'd love that idea to me to um, but it
goes to show like we really haven't changed that water
wheel designed 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, UM, but I'm still to this day amazed
(19:05):
that that's it's just so primitive, but it will. 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 mes cow.
As we talked about in our book, you got to
(19:26):
use the traditional donkey. That's right. I hope they're well
taken care of. I am sure they are. If you yeah,
if you have a donkey that makes mes cow for you,
I'll bet you treat it really nice. Uh 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. Um,
(19:47):
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 gonna
just you know, they're using gravity basically to make water
fall and gain all this turn all that potential energy
(20:09):
into um whatever. The other kind of energy is the
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 pen stock to the point where that water
hits the turbine. And the higher the head, the higher
(20:31):
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. Um.
But as we'll see, that's actually kind of a problem,
(20:53):
the fact that the high head um 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
my favorite one, which is diversion or the run of
river hydro power, which is, um, this is using water
(21:16):
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 um, some of them do just divert some of
the river to produce electrical power. Some like just stick
(21:39):
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
(21:59):
diversion and 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
at 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.
(22:20):
I think that's a spectacular idea. Um. So those that's like,
you've got impoundment diversion, and then another type is called
pump storage, and pump storage is very much like impoundment.
There's like an upper reservoir and pen stocks and you
let the water flow through past the turbine and you
generate electricity. But unlike impoundment, where when the water exits
(22:40):
it just goes downstream and keeps flowing. It's like, what
the hell just happened? Um, you actually capture the water.
I have to say, I've said damn in hell in
this episode, and I I'm really pushing the envelope. If
you ask me, I feel like Bart Simpson, Well, you
said damn high. I took it to mean d a
m high literally, but yeah, you're in trouble. You're saying
(23:00):
thank you, thank you. Um so uh oh. In 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 um that's what
you do. You let the water flow from upper to
lower during peak electricity hours or peak demand, so you
(23:20):
can produce electricity, and then when it's not uh peak demand,
people don't need as much electricity. 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 um spend a lot
of time on Lake Sinclair here in Georgia, and the
(23:44):
dam is very close to where we are. There's two damns,
one at the north end, 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 uh, 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
(24:05):
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 it's
really uh. I mean, I thought I was about to
say violent, but it's just uh. But it's not loud,
so it doesn't seem violent. But it's churning that water
(24:26):
up and I think fish because the birds go crazy
when this is going on. Manh Yeah, it sounds like
utter chaos. It's it is, but it's quiet chaos. Oh
is it quiet? To me? In my head it sounded
like really loud and whoshy and everything. No, it's not
really whishy. You just see the water churning and moving
and it's it's pretty cool. Why is it that if
(24:47):
there's if there's a chance to do something dumb, somebody
on a jet skis going to try it. Have you
ever noticed Yeah, jet ski I don't know. Jet ski
people are. They're different. There's certain breed they got, they
got a little bit of daredevil into my guess they do.
I mean, some of those things are crazy. They go
like eighty miles an hour, and that's not safe. No,
it's not. Um. One of the other last things about
(25:09):
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 hydro electric 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
(25:31):
recharging a battery using wind or solar, So you could
conceivably power your whole pump storage hydro electric plant um
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 much.
Just gonna cousins. Uh. Then finally have marine hydro kinetics,
(25:54):
which we talked about. Do you remember the name of
the episode Can Oceans Power the World From? 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,
(26:15):
title action or currents, you could totally you could totally
make use of it. And apparently there's there's tides and
currents and 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, uh, what's the great lake
(26:36):
there in Chicago? Was at like Michigan, I think superior, superior. Boy,
we're getting crushed right now. I think let's just name
them all. It could be eerie. Maybe here on Ontario
one of those. It's not Ontario. Um, but I just
remember seeing that that scene by the lake and all
those waves and stuff, and I was like, wait a minute.
I thought they're in Chicago, Where the heck are they?
(26:57):
And someone said, no, that's that's a great lake and
it has it can look like the ocean like that,
And 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, that they
were freaks of nature. What lake did you go to? Erie? Okay,
(27:18):
are you sure about that? I'm positive? Okay. Um, So
with the marine hydrogenetics they can and you should go
back and listen to that episode. It's really good. But
one type is if they build it, you know, a
plant right along the shore there and it's got that
turbine at the top and see water flows in and out,
(27:39):
and they use that wave action in the title movement,
uh coming and going to run that turbine, spinning that turbine.
It all goes back to spinning that wheel. Yeah. I
actually saw there was a University of Florida's study. UM
that's that said Florida alone could probably produce ten gigawatts
of electricity from UM marine hydro kinetic schemes alone, and
(28:04):
which is pretty substantial because all of the UM hydro
electric output in the entire United States right now is
thirteen gig a lot. So that'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 listening to them, Stephen Stills, like,
I can't believe it forgot Steven Stills. Steve Stills, little
(28:26):
Stevie Stills is from which uh yeah, he's one of
my favorites too. Uh out of all of the Crosby,
Stills and Nash people are just in general mm hmm,
well yeah, I think out of all of I mean,
Neil Young is the king, obviously, but Stephen Stills was
in Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young, and he also had
(28:49):
this great band that did a one off record band
called Manassas that was awesome. Okay, well what about out
of Emerson Lincoln Palmer. I mean, if you're not a
a lake Man, then I don't know what you're doing
in life? What about Bachman Turner? Overdrive? You gotta go
with Overdrive? Okay, yeah, totally Overdrive was he was awesome. Sure, um,
(29:12):
you you want to take a second break yet? I
think so, I think that is our new queue and
I get really off track to stop the show and
then pick up again with the topic and new queue.
All right, we'll be right back, everybody. We got to
sort ourselves out. Okay. So if you're not just sorry
(29:59):
eyed over hydro power right now, you clearly haven't been
paying attention to this episode, like we're mad at hydro
power is amazing, Like, um, it uses water is fuel, right,
and water is a renewable resources. We're never going to
run out of it thanks to the hydrologic cycle, which
um replenishes the Earth's water all the time. The fact
that rivers flow thanks to the force of gravity, um,
(30:22):
and the rains swell their their flow, and um it
happens seasonally every season. You can kind of set your
watch by. It's pretty amazing stuff. Um. 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,
(30:44):
Like the water just loses a little bit of its
kinetic energy for a second then but when it flows
out the other side, it regains it rather quickly. You know,
it doesn't need to be replenished. Um, it's not wasted,
like you just stole a little bit of its kinetic
energy and used it for something else than the river
was like whatever, I got it right back. So it's
a pretty amazing green source of energy. Um. You can
(31:09):
understand why people have been so so cookie for it
for a while. Plus it doesn't um expend any greenhouse
gases in its production. Right, Yeah, if you hate greenhouse gasses,
then you love hydro electric power because along with solar, uh,
nuclear and wind, um it has no emissions. And we've
(31:29):
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. UM, it's all about just making efforts to
minimize those as much as possible, right. Um. The other
(31:54):
thing about hydro electric power is that, UM there it's
just simpler. Like when we're talking about thermal there's a
couple of extraditional 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
(32:17):
machine or less machinery involved, UM, it's a it's a
simpler technology, which means that ultimately, especially if you look
at the lifespan of a hydro electric plant. UM, 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,
(32:38):
they usually build them to last usually decades longer than
a thermal power plant too. Yeah, and then if you're
in the in the business of creating power, you kind
of love hydro electric power because it's instantaneous. Um. If
demand goes up, you can just spin that turbine faster
and allow more water to flow through, if you know.
(33:00):
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, you're producing power and electricity
the minute that things starts spinning. Yeah. Well, actually there's UM,
there's measurements of the ramp up time. And for some
kinds of hydro electric power, it's less than a minute,
about thirty seconds from zero to producing all the power.
(33:23):
You're you're like, it's peak out power output. Um. Other
kinds are five minutes. So I saw anywhere from thirty
seconds to five minutes ramp up time. For things like
coal and oil, it can take half a day to
a couple of days from starting from scratch to full power. Um.
So that's a huge, huge bonuses if you're um an
(33:45):
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. Um. Everything's going to have some
sort of impact on the environment. And in a 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
(34:08):
you know, some of the air is let out of
the balloon a little bit. But we have to cover
this stuff. Um, when you're gonna build a big reservoir
for a dam, there's gonna be a lot of impact
on the environment. Um. Everything above that used to be
shoreline and dry or maybe even marshy or forest land
is gonna be an aquatic ecosystem pretty quickly, within about
(34:29):
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. There, anytime they
build a big damn project, you're probably going to find
(34:51):
within uh a year, two or a handful reports of
entire species that have gone extinct because of that damn project.
And a lot of people have kind of woken up
over the last few decades, especially as UM as the
world has become much more environmentally conscious since the seventies,
um and said, whoa, this is this is a big
(35:13):
deal here, actually um and hydro power, I think has
kind of gotten away with trading on it. Yeah special
special murder, interspecial murder UM, but hydro has gotten gotten
away by trading on it's 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.
(35:35):
And that's kind of what I was referring to. We're
not just kind of like that is almost entirely what
I was referring to, where hydro um and we'll talk
about the future in a second, but uh, 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 impacts. So we've got
(35:58):
to figure this out so we can keep doinging this,
but we've got to do it without you know, wiping
out entire species every time we build a new dam. Yeah, totally. Um.
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
(36:19):
wasn't um a lake bottom basically, and it's gonna decompose.
It's gonna release methane and CEO two into the atmosphere
during those drought periods when that reservoir evaporates, and then
you've got all the downstream problems to stuff that was um.
You know, instead of flooding these downstream ecosystems, it's kind
(36:39):
of like the opposite of what's going on up top.
They're gonna dry up and all those all that nutrient
rich silt that's deposited downstream as the river flows uh
is blocked by the dams, and that's gonna build up
in the reservoir, causing problems for the dam itself and uh,
nutrient depletion downstream. So you know, it's kind of messing
(36:59):
up both sides. Yeah, Um, and so even even for
aquatic animals, it's it's a pretty big problem. Um, just
building a dam is an obstacle for the fish that
used to live there. So fish that um, you know,
used to swim upstream past where that dam is now
(37:20):
located to its breeding grounds and spawning grounds. Um, they
have a problem. They have a big problem getting around,
and the hydro industry is 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. Um.
You know, I think we talked about in the Hoover
(37:43):
Damn episode that there's like fish air drops, trucking fish,
fish cannons, all sorts of weird stuff. None of them
none of them hold a candle to unobstructed treat of
a river, Like that's what you want. So that's another
channel lenge that's facing the hydro electric production industry. Is Okay,
(38:04):
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 a fish cannon. No, I don't
know about for the fish, but for you know, jet
skiers hanging out watching them get shot upstream. I think
(38:24):
we I think we did research into fish cannons and
they're they're okay, right, yeah, but I mean you've it's
got to scare the yeah, you know, I don't know.
I don't know. I'm sure some of them do the
fish equivalent of jet skiers being shot. Come on, Brose,
send me through again. Uh. There are also humans that
(38:48):
live in communities that live near where these dams are built,
and they will get um what's it called when you
have to force someone out of a place displaced? Yeah,
but evicted the the actual moved along? Oh no, what
do you call it that? When the government steps in
and say, hey, we gotta move your house because we're
(39:08):
gonna build a school eminent domain. Yes, okay, Well they
will come through and say, I'm sorry, community, but we're
gonna build a damn here. You're gonna leave. Here's some
money maybe to help you out with this, but you
don't have a choice. We're gonna flood. And in fact,
all the lakes in Georgia are man made power producing lakes,
and there were once communities in some of these places,
(39:29):
and there are stories of cars and houses at the
bottoms of some of these lakes. Yeah, which is just
creeps filled to 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? You know, it's awesome. It's
thrilling but terrifying at the same time, like being on
(39:51):
a jet ski uh huh. And that's without even counting
the catfish that are the scariest creatures on the that's right,
or the gar Good lord, man, I saw a car
last summer that I had never seen one in person before.
It looks prehistoric, it really does. Yeah, They're they're very
scary looking and they'll they'll eat absolutely anything. You can
(40:12):
have a guard problem real quick. Uh So, the people
that have been displaced, I think the World Commission on
Damn's did a study and they estimated in the year
two thousand that damn said physically displaced between forty and
eighty million people all around the world. Yeah, that's so
many people. I mean, it's just like you said, like, sorry,
(40:33):
you have to move. You don't like this is this
is going to be underwater, you know, very soon. Um.
And then when you build the damn, even once you settle,
resettle the people who used to live in what's now
a reservoir. Um, the people downstream are are under constant
threat of the damn failing. When that happens, and it happens,
(40:56):
whole towns get flooded out, lots of people can die.
I millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of
damage is done so um. And it's not like it's
not like that's just a remote possibility. Apparently. As of
two thousand fifteen, the American Society for Civil Engineers identified
(41:17):
fifteen thousand, six hundred dams just in the United States
that posed the highest hazard potential, the most critical for failure. UM.
Fifteen thousand dams right now are really menacing, like a
a guy in a jet skis circling you. That level
(41:38):
of menacing. Yeah, and I think there was one too
many times. I think was that three or four? That
was like seven? Oh well, I was about to say
three is a magic numbers, so maybe six is twice
as good, but yeah, sevens too much. I think they're
about ninety thousand dams in the US, so that's fifteen
thousand of those ninety thousands are high hazard. And um,
(42:00):
you know, when you hear about government and politics, you'll
often hear uh talk of like, hey, the one thing
we can agree on, we've got to get together on
as infrastructure. This is what they're talking about, um, roads
and bridges and stuff like that. But part of it
is damns, And like, you know, one of the ideas
of moving forward is let's get in there. Let's I
(42:21):
think only twenty dred of the ninety thousand dams in
the US even produce electricity. 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 damn yeah, which
(42:44):
I mean, it's like that's that's just the lowest hanging
fruit you can think of right there. It's like these
damns already had their environmental impact decades ago, so it's
it's not as bad as you know, um, you might
as well like put into good use. And it's certainly
preferable to to building another dam to generate power. It's like,
(43:06):
what are you even doing, Like, don't do that. Wait
until all of the damns that um needs shoring up
anyway are producing electrical power, then maybe we can look
into more damn projects. Apparently, that is not how the
industry goes UM. Like I said, they kind of seem
to have traded on their you know, green energy um
uh image. But they're they're an energy sector. They're part
(43:31):
of the energy sector, and they do things they don't like,
things like government regulation, and they don't like things like, um,
you know, tribes or local governments having a say in
their licensing and all that stuff, so they lobby against
that kind of thing. They're you know, their corporations. So um,
it's a real problem in the in the industry that
right now they seem to be largely in favor of
(43:54):
pressing back against environmental regulations or regulations that less than
the industry 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
um they they are forced to do it the right way. Yeah,
this one in Turkey sounds like a real nasty one.
(44:17):
They're building on the Tigris. It's gonna flood ninety miles
of the river plus a hundred and fifty miles of tributaries. Um,
big time damage to the ecosystems there. And we're talking
ancient archaeological sites that are going to be wiped out,
people displaced. Uh. And a lot of people in the
international community have said, hey, uh, Turkey, why don't you
(44:38):
think about some different ways to do this, And Turkey said, no,
this is what we're doing. Uh, We're we're gonna push
forward with this. We have another one on the Euphrates
that has reduced waterflow UM to Iraq to its south
by this caused a loss of sixty acres of arable
land every year. Yeah, it's just such an astounding figure.
(45:02):
It's like, how is there any any land left? You know?
So there are fortunately a lot of people in the
industry who are, like the writings 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 to
just keep going for in this direction, so they're trying
to find ways to make it better. UM. One of
the inventions that I saw was called movable hep um
(45:24):
hydroelectric power plant. It's movable, uh, not that you just
move it wherever you want, like whenever you want, but
the actual the actual like plant itself can move up
or down basically casts. That's good. UM. It moves up
and down depending on how high or low the river is,
which is good because you know, seasonally river river height,
(45:47):
which has a huge impact on the amount of energy
it has. UM. You know ebbs and flows basically UM.
So if you can lower you know, your your your
power plant in the water further when the waters um low,
or raise it when it's high, you can also make
it easier for fish to go around above or under unobstructed,
(46:09):
which is a huge, huge bonus too. Yeah, there's another
UM couple of technologies that are very cool. One called
a v l H or u l H very low
head or ultra low head facilities. We talked about the
head as being you know, that volume of water plus
the amount of drop, and basically they just don't need
(46:29):
that much of a drop, um 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. Um.
And then these low velocity turbines. I really like this idea.
It's basically saying, hey, why don't we just concentrate on
(46:49):
or one of the things we can concentrate on is
making our turbines just super efficient and they don't have
to spend at nine d r p m s um.
They don't have to spend very fast at all. So
you can produce um, you know, maybe the same amount
of electricity without the need for those high pressure pin stocks. Right,
so the fish can just swim right through. They're morving
(47:11):
that slowly. UM. I think from what I saw, the
reason why everybody's not just going to the them the
low velocity turbines is because it's way cheaper to buy
and install and operate 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
(47:33):
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, um uh pick hydro back
up and brush it off and and actually make it green,
you know, in the near future. So I hope. So.
(47:54):
I mean, sometimes you gotta I know it's antithetical to
capitalism and ringing every last penny out of your company,
but sometimes you gotta bite the billet a little bit,
invest a little bit more in something that's better for
the world down the line, and still make gobs of
money exactly nicely put chuck, thank you. Um, you got
(48:14):
anything else? I got nothing else? I don't either, man.
So that's hydro power. Um, look for another supplement edition
of hydro or probably somewhere down the line. Uh. And
in the meantime, until then, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this a little statistical analysis from a listener,
(48:36):
and this 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 UH to me, as too 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 pique my interest on a fascinating topic when
I'm a little bored. UH. I listened every day, which
means many repeats, and I still never struggle to find
(48:58):
an episode to keep me interest did as you may
be aware, at the end of the year, UH, Spotify
gives a nice wrap up on individual listening habits. I
listened to over a hundred and ten thousand minutes on
Spotify Music and podcasts combine. In the year, I listened
to over five hundred episodes and stuff you should Know
at an accumulated twenty four thousand, two hundred and fifty
(49:21):
six minutes. My biggest streak, wow, was twenty nine episodes
and one day 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 like you'd have to be on speed
(49:42):
that day to listen to twenty nine episodes in one
bank and he's not on speed. Uh. You all have
helped me through some of the hardest times as well
as shared and some of the greatest times, all without
even knowing it. Especially this year with COVID and a
very stressful semester at law school. You truly help this
make make this year the best it could be. I
hope you had a relaxing holiday and a great start
(50:02):
to the new year. Chow Anthony, ps I love Speed
No eight Speed. That's that's great, Anthony. I'm good luck
with law school too. Um. I actually saw a couple
of people who topped his his total minutes. I think
(50:23):
somebody tweeted um, because like you can, you can tweet
that really easily or post it. I saw one and
I don't I'm sorry, I don't know what their name is,
but um, they had like fifty five thousand minutes listen
to stuff you should know the last year and that
nuts man. So hats off to everybody who listens to
(50:44):
us in general. But also if you listen to us
that much, we really appreciate you and hopefully, um we
never annoy you, Like hopefully one day it never just
clicks and you're like, I can never listen to these
guys again. Ever heard too much? You know, to be
careful out there, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Everybody be careful. Uh. If you want to get in
touch with this, like Anthony did, we love hearing from
(51:07):
our friends. That means you. You can send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(51:29):
H
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 w. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's
here too, somewhere not just in spirit, but like digitally virtually.
(00:23):
She's like, um, Johnny depp in uh um no that oh,
Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, that's what Jerry's like. I've
been singing Judas Priests all day because of this. Instead
of Turbo Lover, I'm singing hydro power. Oh that's pretty cool, man.
(00:47):
Can you give us a little couple of verses? Um
me drove power? M what comes? And failed to mention
I'm wearing my leathers okay, just the leather of us
did no shared underneath? Yeah? And and nothing else but boots?
Some buttless chaps, that's awesome. Really, are there any is
(01:08):
there any need to make any other kind of chaps?
I mean, I think they usually don't have a butt, right,
You're just expected to wear something underneath. Maybe that's what
it is, But then the whole thing just calling them
buttless chaps is superfluous. Yeah, it's redundant, right Yeah. Um,
So since we started talking about buttless chaps. Since we
coined a new term, buttless chaps. I think we're the
(01:31):
first people to ever use those two words together. Yeah,
people usually say the A word, right exactly. Uh, we're
clearly talking about hydro power, not just hydro electric power. Friends.
Hydro power. There's a lot of energy and that their water,
and we humans have have gotten pretty clever at figure
out how to extract it. Yeah, and this is something
(01:53):
that we used to use a lot more of in
this country. Um. Up until about the mid twentieth century,
we were using lots of hydro power, and it peaked
in about nineteen sixty. 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,
hydro power plants in the US about the US has
(02:15):
a bunch, but we're also tearing them down along with
Europe at a rated 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
hydro power, UM, specifically hydro electric power in a really
weird place in its history. But from all the research
(02:36):
that I'm I've done. I don't think it's going anywhere.
What I think is going on is that it's at
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 alertic actually
not that green. Does everyone just standing around look at
(02:57):
each other, going kind of you, what do you want
to do something? Yeah, it's like trying to figure out
a restaurant as a group. Oh god, that'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
gonna say they're they're usually really bossy. No. But whenever
(03:20):
it's like a a sketch fest 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 x er. I'm
happy to go anywhere. So get on your yelp or
get out your Michelin Guide or whatever your kid to
do these days. Yeah, they all carry that that paperback
(03:43):
Michelin Guide with them the Penguin Classics version of it. Right. So,
hydro power around the world, though, is pretty popular, um,
some places more than others. I think Paraguay they are
far and away the leader if you're talking about anywhere,
because they're a Norway no surprise there at about nine
(04:04):
five along with Nepal and uh Tajiki stand and I
wanted to ask you this. You haven't here that China,
Brazil in the US lead major countries, and the US
is down to six percent, so the top three. I
assume we're third at six uh yeah, which just goes
to show how much energy we put out only six
(04:26):
percent of his hydro and yet we um we're the
third in line of of um hydro electric production in
the world. China one or two uh one I believe,
and then Brazil. So Brazil and then it goes down
to six. Yeah. An't that crazy? Yeah, it's a big drop. Yeah,
But I mean that just goes to show like we
(04:47):
we've produced a lot, a lot of electricity and it's
just some of it is is um from hydro which
really boggles the mind that at one point, like you
were saying a third of our power came from hydro
electri production plants. It's just crazy, you know. Yeah, I
think it's down to about sixteen worldwide, right, yeah, five
(05:09):
years ago. Yeah, and then that actually represents a really
precipitous drop. UM. I think in too, like the mid
two thousands of the odds it was at like and
it dropped down to sixteent within maybe ten years or less. UM.
And the reason for that it's not necessarily that people
have stopped producing as much hydro power. UM, they've stopped
(05:33):
building as many new projects around the world and have
started opting instead, unfortunately for what's called thermal which is
usually UM using a fossil fuel like coal, oil, natural
gas to heat some water to produce steam to make
a turbine spin to UM to run a generator basically,
and UM, it's just cheaper, it's much more understandable. UM.
(05:57):
There's a lot of drawbacks to it, but it just
requires far less of an investment up front than building
a traditional hydro electric plant. Yeah, and we'll we'll get
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. Uh,
(06:17):
you know, stand beside any river, especially when this's got
some rapids. When you see those rapids funneling through a
small channel, it gets pretty intense, you know, uh, 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 um, of course some people
(06:38):
think the Chinese, the Han dynasty, they're always a good
bet for for leading the way. Maybe the Persians or
maybe they actually do. Have writings from the third century
BC from Philo of Byzantium, may he made a great
dough by the way he did. He was also the
guy who first um named the seven wonders of the
(06:58):
ancient world. Well, his dough one of them, right, He's like,
you gotta try it. It's the flakiest, it's so good
and flakey. But yeah, there's a i think a description
of a water wheel from from old Philo. Yeah, from
twenty three hundred or so years ago. So yeah, we've
figured out that, like you can, you can put water
(07:18):
to work. Um, we've known for a long time it
was using water as um basically a way to produce
mechanical energy, not electricity. Put a pin in that because
we're gonna get to it in like thirty five seconds.
But first we used water to um push water wheels,
(07:38):
like those charming things you've seen like a Thomas Kincaid painting.
It's one of my favorite things. They're really wonderful. I
love them. They're about as coins as anything ever has
been in the history of the world. There's just something
so tranquil about it. But if you always loved them.
When I was a kid, I remember going to Stone
Mountain Park and they had the old grist mill there,
and I think I even kind of understood that. The
(08:01):
purpose and just how I think it's simplicity always really
just hit me right where in the in the fields
it is. It's one of those things Chuck that it was.
It is a very simple idea, but it was like
it's a home run right out of the gate. Like
basically what we do to produce hydroelectricity is almost an
(08:23):
unchanged version of you know, the water wheel. Yeah, I
mean it's got fancier over the years, but it's like,
and 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,
(08:44):
to spin a turbine. Yeah, so, um, you spin this
water wheel or turbine as we'll see. Um, and there's
a that spins on an axis. Well, if you insert
an axle into that axis, it will spin the axle,
and you can attach all sorts of cool stuff to
that axle to make them spin too. Like you can
you can insert more wheels and have them pressed down
(09:06):
on stone as they rotate, so you can grind things
or put turn turn. Yeah, you can mill flour. You
can grind paper into 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,
(09:26):
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 of thousand years,
basically until the nineteenth 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
(09:49):
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 called the Craigside
like lamp, Yeah, yeah, you love lamp lamp. It's in
(10:10):
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 christer Shire or something yeah, or like
(10:32):
nothing rum Bland or something like that I just inserted
to be, So, however you pronounce it. A 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,
(10:54):
I'm gonna one up you there because we have a
hydro generator at the Wolverine Chair Company factory and we
have sixteen street lights 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 dropped crime a little bit, I would guess. So,
(11:16):
I mean, I'm sure they had like I'm sure yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm sure they had like the gas lights already, but
the electricals is true. Yeah, those gas lights, I think, Chuck.
So we You know, we talked a lot about hydro
electric power in our Hoover Damn two parter, if I
remember correctly, Yes, but I think we also might have
talked about in our Electric Chair episode. But I feel
(11:37):
like we may have misspoken and said that, Um, either Buffalo,
New York or Niagara Falls, New York was the first
city to use hydro electric power to power it's street lights.
And that's just not true. It's actually Grand Rapids Michigan. Yeah,
they were a few years later. I love how you
know a picture like this, The sketch version of this
(11:58):
is two engineers with the Niagara Falls behind them, reading
a newspaper going, hey, he says he had Grand Rapids
are using water to make light if only we had
such a means to do so, and Niagara Falls behind him.
It is just like look at me. Yeah, so um,
(12:20):
that was just an excellent nineteenth century sketch that you
just made. By the way, that's when sketch was at
its best. So I don't know, I would say the
seventies seventies sketches would be they're they're pretty tough to
to contain with. By the way, I watched that John
Belushi documentary last night, very good, and it's amazing when
(12:40):
you look at the speaking of seventies sketch, to look
at these archival photos of the like house parties and
apartment hangs where it's like Belushi and Bill Murray and
Harold Ramos and Lorraine Newman, and I mean just like
all the comedy heroes just sitting around like drinking and
(13:02):
smoking weed. Now that I endorsed that thing, but I'd
like to be at that party, yeah, man, I mean,
like I I loved seeing pictures like that for that
magic funny that party was and probably pretty great. Great
either that or else I'd just be like I, I'd
just be too nervous and socially anxious to talk to
anybody and wouldn't have a good time at all. Well,
(13:24):
the first, um, 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 Fun cons when
I was sitting in a room with basically the original
Upright Citizen's Brigade songs Amy Poehler and Andy Richter and
Andy Daily and all these comedy heroes, and I just
I was so afraid to even speak, but I was
(13:46):
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
Waltz said another that was basically my joke. And I
was like, I'm gonna start talking nice and I did,
and you did. Did you get applause? No? But they
didn't all turn around and look at me and go
(14:07):
who's this guy like I thought they would, just like, Oh,
we're all just people. And did they make you an
honorary a member of the Upright Citizens per game? No?
Did you get a T shirt? I did get a
T shirt? Okay, 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,
(14:27):
and we're going to take a break and talk about
the types of modern hydro power right after this. Okay,
(15:03):
Chuck so Um 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. Okay, let's let's hear it. Water
flowing at four miles an hour, just four. It is
very slow, like you you yawn basically when you see that,
(15:25):
it's like a walking pace. It can move a five
foot diameter boulder. Okay, Okay, seven miles prior has the
same force as an e F five tornado. And water
water flowing at twenty five miles prior has a pressure
equivalent of wind that's blowing at seven hundred and ninety
(15:48):
miles per hour, faster than the speed of sound. So
there's a tremendous amount of kinetic energy and flowing water UM.
And we have figured out over time 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,
(16:09):
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 and just the right way,
or water is 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 in
side or something. And um, we've come up with a
(16:32):
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. Uh.
That's those are watertight and it's basically an aerodynamic chamber
that's gonna you know, I talked earlier about when that
water channel narrows, how much more forceful it gets, And
that's what they do in this case. They focus and
(16:53):
narrow the water column and then put it to the turbine,
obviously at a at a much higher rate, right, Um.
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 no, maybe that'd be radio.
I can't remember. But basically there's axial radio and mixed
(17:14):
and most things are mixed. And 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 nineteenth century, and it's
um it's fan blades basically are adjusted to that the
water spills down from above onto it, but as it
hits it, the fan blades directed downward into the side,
(17:38):
so the water ends up actually slashing around parallel to
the spin of the turbine and spinning it real good,
spens it real good, good Old Francis. Uh. If you're
talking about hydro electricity these days, Um, you're gonna spin
that turbine. Axl's gonna spin the turbine, and it's attached
(17:58):
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
(18:19):
a C current that's really slow moving. And we talked about,
you know, the invention of a C 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.
(18:41):
I'd love that idea to me to um, but it
goes to show like we really haven't changed that water
wheel designed 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, UM, but I'm still to this day amazed
(19:05):
that that's it's just so primitive, but it will. 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 mes cow.
As we talked about in our book, you got to
(19:26):
use the traditional donkey. That's right. I hope they're well
taken care of. I am sure they are. If you yeah,
if you have a donkey that makes mes cow for you,
I'll bet you treat it really nice. Uh 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. Um,
(19:47):
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 gonna
just you know, they're using gravity basically to make water
fall and gain all this turn all that potential energy
(20:09):
into um whatever. The other kind of energy is the
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 pen stock to the point where that water
hits the turbine. And the higher the head, the higher
(20:31):
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. Um.
But as we'll see, that's actually kind of a problem,
(20:53):
the fact that the high head um 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
my favorite one, which is diversion or the run of
river hydro power, which is, um, this is using water
(21:16):
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 um, some of them do just divert some of
the river to produce electrical power. Some like just stick
(21:39):
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
(21:59):
diversion and 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
at 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.
(22:20):
I think that's a spectacular idea. Um. So those that's like,
you've got impoundment diversion, and then another type is called
pump storage, and pump storage is very much like impoundment.
There's like an upper reservoir and pen stocks and you
let the water flow through past the turbine and you
generate electricity. But unlike impoundment, where when the water exits
(22:40):
it just goes downstream and keeps flowing. It's like, what
the hell just happened? Um, you actually capture the water.
I have to say, I've said damn in hell in
this episode, and I I'm really pushing the envelope. If
you ask me, I feel like Bart Simpson, Well, you
said damn high. I took it to mean d a
m high literally, but yeah, you're in trouble. You're saying
(23:00):
thank you, thank you. Um so uh oh. In 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 um that's what
you do. You let the water flow from upper to
lower during peak electricity hours or peak demand, so you
(23:20):
can produce electricity, and then when it's not uh peak demand,
people don't need as much electricity. 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 um spend a lot
of time on Lake Sinclair here in Georgia, and the
(23:44):
dam is very close to where we are. There's two damns,
one at the north end, 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 uh, 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
(24:05):
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 it's
really uh. I mean, I thought I was about to
say violent, but it's just uh. But it's not loud,
so it doesn't seem violent. But it's churning that water
(24:26):
up and I think fish because the birds go crazy
when this is going on. Manh Yeah, it sounds like
utter chaos. It's it is, but it's quiet chaos. Oh
is it quiet? To me? In my head it sounded
like really loud and whoshy and everything. No, it's not
really whishy. You just see the water churning and moving
and it's it's pretty cool. Why is it that if
(24:47):
there's if there's a chance to do something dumb, somebody
on a jet skis going to try it. Have you
ever noticed Yeah, jet ski I don't know. Jet ski
people are. They're different. There's certain breed they got, they
got a little bit of daredevil into my guess they do.
I mean, some of those things are crazy. They go
like eighty miles an hour, and that's not safe. No,
it's not. Um. One of the other last things about
(25:09):
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 hydro electric 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
(25:31):
recharging a battery using wind or solar, So you could
conceivably power your whole pump storage hydro electric plant um
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 much.
Just gonna cousins. Uh. Then finally have marine hydro kinetics,
(25:54):
which we talked about. Do you remember the name of
the episode Can Oceans Power the World From? 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,
(26:15):
title action or currents, you could totally you could totally
make use of it. And apparently there's there's tides and
currents and 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, uh, what's the great lake
(26:36):
there in Chicago? Was at like Michigan, I think superior, superior. Boy,
we're getting crushed right now. I think let's just name
them all. It could be eerie. Maybe here on Ontario
one of those. It's not Ontario. Um, but I just
remember seeing that that scene by the lake and all
those waves and stuff, and I was like, wait a minute.
I thought they're in Chicago, Where the heck are they?
(26:57):
And someone said, no, that's that's a great lake and
it has it can look like the ocean like that,
And 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, that they
were freaks of nature. What lake did you go to? Erie? Okay,
(27:18):
are you sure about that? I'm positive? Okay. Um, So
with the marine hydrogenetics they can and you should go
back and listen to that episode. It's really good. But
one type is if they build it, you know, a
plant right along the shore there and it's got that
turbine at the top and see water flows in and out,
(27:39):
and they use that wave action in the title movement,
uh coming and going to run that turbine, spinning that turbine.
It all goes back to spinning that wheel. Yeah. I
actually saw there was a University of Florida's study. UM
that's that said Florida alone could probably produce ten gigawatts
of electricity from UM marine hydro kinetic schemes alone, and
(28:04):
which is pretty substantial because all of the UM hydro
electric output in the entire United States right now is
thirteen gig a lot. So that'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 listening to them, Stephen Stills, like,
I can't believe it forgot Steven Stills. Steve Stills, little
(28:26):
Stevie Stills is from which uh yeah, he's one of
my favorites too. Uh out of all of the Crosby,
Stills and Nash people are just in general mm hmm,
well yeah, I think out of all of I mean,
Neil Young is the king, obviously, but Stephen Stills was
in Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young, and he also had
(28:49):
this great band that did a one off record band
called Manassas that was awesome. Okay, well what about out
of Emerson Lincoln Palmer. I mean, if you're not a
a lake Man, then I don't know what you're doing
in life? What about Bachman Turner? Overdrive? You gotta go
with Overdrive? Okay, yeah, totally Overdrive was he was awesome. Sure, um,
(29:12):
you you want to take a second break yet? I
think so, I think that is our new queue and
I get really off track to stop the show and
then pick up again with the topic and new queue.
All right, we'll be right back, everybody. We got to
sort ourselves out. Okay. So if you're not just sorry
(29:59):
eyed over hydro power right now, you clearly haven't been
paying attention to this episode, like we're mad at hydro
power is amazing, Like, um, it uses water is fuel, right,
and water is a renewable resources. We're never going to
run out of it thanks to the hydrologic cycle, which
um replenishes the Earth's water all the time. The fact
that rivers flow thanks to the force of gravity, um,
(30:22):
and the rains swell their their flow, and um it
happens seasonally every season. You can kind of set your
watch by. It's pretty amazing stuff. Um. 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,
(30:44):
Like the water just loses a little bit of its
kinetic energy for a second then but when it flows
out the other side, it regains it rather quickly. You know,
it doesn't need to be replenished. Um, it's not wasted,
like you just stole a little bit of its kinetic
energy and used it for something else than the river
was like whatever, I got it right back. So it's
a pretty amazing green source of energy. Um. You can
(31:09):
understand why people have been so so cookie for it
for a while. Plus it doesn't um expend any greenhouse
gases in its production. Right, Yeah, if you hate greenhouse gasses,
then you love hydro electric power because along with solar, uh,
nuclear and wind, um it has no emissions. And we've
(31:29):
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. UM, it's all about just making efforts to
minimize those as much as possible, right. Um. The other
(31:54):
thing about hydro electric power is that, UM there it's
just simpler. Like when we're talking about thermal there's a
couple of extraditional 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
(32:17):
machine or less machinery involved, UM, it's a it's a
simpler technology, which means that ultimately, especially if you look
at the lifespan of a hydro electric plant. UM, 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,
(32:38):
they usually build them to last usually decades longer than
a thermal power plant too. Yeah, and then if you're
in the in the business of creating power, you kind
of love hydro electric power because it's instantaneous. Um. If
demand goes up, you can just spin that turbine faster
and allow more water to flow through, if you know.
(33:00):
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, you're producing power and electricity
the minute that things starts spinning. Yeah. Well, actually there's UM,
there's measurements of the ramp up time. And for some
kinds of hydro electric power, it's less than a minute,
about thirty seconds from zero to producing all the power.
(33:23):
You're you're like, it's peak out power output. Um. Other
kinds are five minutes. So I saw anywhere from thirty
seconds to five minutes ramp up time. For things like
coal and oil, it can take half a day to
a couple of days from starting from scratch to full power. Um.
So that's a huge, huge bonuses if you're um an
(33:45):
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. Um. Everything's going to have some
sort of impact on the environment. And in a 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
(34:08):
you know, some of the air is let out of
the balloon a little bit. But we have to cover
this stuff. Um, when you're gonna build a big reservoir
for a dam, there's gonna be a lot of impact
on the environment. Um. Everything above that used to be
shoreline and dry or maybe even marshy or forest land
is gonna be an aquatic ecosystem pretty quickly, within about
(34:29):
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. There, anytime they
build a big damn project, you're probably going to find
(34:51):
within uh a year, two or a handful reports of
entire species that have gone extinct because of that damn project.
And a lot of people have kind of woken up
over the last few decades, especially as UM as the
world has become much more environmentally conscious since the seventies,
um and said, whoa, this is this is a big
(35:13):
deal here, actually um and hydro power, I think has
kind of gotten away with trading on it. Yeah special
special murder, interspecial murder UM, but hydro has gotten gotten
away by trading on it's 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.
(35:35):
And that's kind of what I was referring to. We're
not just kind of like that is almost entirely what
I was referring to, where hydro um and we'll talk
about the future in a second, but uh, 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 impacts. So we've got
(35:58):
to figure this out so we can keep doinging this,
but we've got to do it without you know, wiping
out entire species every time we build a new dam. Yeah, totally. Um.
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
(36:19):
wasn't um a lake bottom basically, and it's gonna decompose.
It's gonna release methane and CEO two into the atmosphere
during those drought periods when that reservoir evaporates, and then
you've got all the downstream problems to stuff that was um.
You know, instead of flooding these downstream ecosystems, it's kind
(36:39):
of like the opposite of what's going on up top.
They're gonna dry up and all those all that nutrient
rich silt that's deposited downstream as the river flows uh
is blocked by the dams, and that's gonna build up
in the reservoir, causing problems for the dam itself and uh,
nutrient depletion downstream. So you know, it's kind of messing
(36:59):
up both sides. Yeah, Um, and so even even for
aquatic animals, it's it's a pretty big problem. Um, just
building a dam is an obstacle for the fish that
used to live there. So fish that um, you know,
used to swim upstream past where that dam is now
(37:20):
located to its breeding grounds and spawning grounds. Um, they
have a problem. They have a big problem getting around,
and the hydro industry is 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. Um.
You know, I think we talked about in the Hoover
(37:43):
Damn episode that there's like fish air drops, trucking fish,
fish cannons, all sorts of weird stuff. None of them
none of them hold a candle to unobstructed treat of
a river, Like that's what you want. So that's another
channel lenge that's facing the hydro electric production industry. Is Okay,
(38:04):
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 a fish cannon. No, I don't
know about for the fish, but for you know, jet
skiers hanging out watching them get shot upstream. I think
(38:24):
we I think we did research into fish cannons and
they're they're okay, right, yeah, but I mean you've it's
got to scare the yeah, you know, I don't know.
I don't know. I'm sure some of them do the
fish equivalent of jet skiers being shot. Come on, Brose,
send me through again. Uh. There are also humans that
(38:48):
live in communities that live near where these dams are built,
and they will get um what's it called when you
have to force someone out of a place displaced? Yeah,
but evicted the the actual moved along? Oh no, what
do you call it that? When the government steps in
and say, hey, we gotta move your house because we're
(39:08):
gonna build a school eminent domain. Yes, okay, Well they
will come through and say, I'm sorry, community, but we're
gonna build a damn here. You're gonna leave. Here's some
money maybe to help you out with this, but you
don't have a choice. We're gonna flood. And in fact,
all the lakes in Georgia are man made power producing lakes,
and there were once communities in some of these places,
(39:29):
and there are stories of cars and houses at the
bottoms of some of these lakes. Yeah, which is just
creeps filled to 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? You know, it's awesome. It's
thrilling but terrifying at the same time, like being on
(39:51):
a jet ski uh huh. And that's without even counting
the catfish that are the scariest creatures on the that's right,
or the gar Good lord, man, I saw a car
last summer that I had never seen one in person before.
It looks prehistoric, it really does. Yeah, They're they're very
scary looking and they'll they'll eat absolutely anything. You can
(40:12):
have a guard problem real quick. Uh So, the people
that have been displaced, I think the World Commission on
Damn's did a study and they estimated in the year
two thousand that damn said physically displaced between forty and
eighty million people all around the world. Yeah, that's so
many people. I mean, it's just like you said, like, sorry,
(40:33):
you have to move. You don't like this is this
is going to be underwater, you know, very soon. Um.
And then when you build the damn, even once you settle,
resettle the people who used to live in what's now
a reservoir. Um, the people downstream are are under constant
threat of the damn failing. When that happens, and it happens,
(40:56):
whole towns get flooded out, lots of people can die.
I millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of
damage is done so um. And it's not like it's
not like that's just a remote possibility. Apparently. As of
two thousand fifteen, the American Society for Civil Engineers identified
(41:17):
fifteen thousand, six hundred dams just in the United States
that posed the highest hazard potential, the most critical for failure. UM.
Fifteen thousand dams right now are really menacing, like a
a guy in a jet skis circling you. That level
(41:38):
of menacing. Yeah, and I think there was one too
many times. I think was that three or four? That
was like seven? Oh well, I was about to say
three is a magic numbers, so maybe six is twice
as good, but yeah, sevens too much. I think they're
about ninety thousand dams in the US, so that's fifteen
thousand of those ninety thousands are high hazard. And um,
(42:00):
you know, when you hear about government and politics, you'll
often hear uh talk of like, hey, the one thing
we can agree on, we've got to get together on
as infrastructure. This is what they're talking about, um, roads
and bridges and stuff like that. But part of it
is damns, And like, you know, one of the ideas
of moving forward is let's get in there. Let's I
(42:21):
think only twenty dred of the ninety thousand dams in
the US even produce electricity. 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 damn yeah, which
(42:44):
I mean, it's like that's that's just the lowest hanging
fruit you can think of right there. It's like these
damns already had their environmental impact decades ago, so it's
it's not as bad as you know, um, you might
as well like put into good use. And it's certainly
preferable to to building another dam to generate power. It's like,
(43:06):
what are you even doing, Like, don't do that. Wait
until all of the damns that um needs shoring up
anyway are producing electrical power, then maybe we can look
into more damn projects. Apparently, that is not how the
industry goes UM. Like I said, they kind of seem
to have traded on their you know, green energy um
uh image. But they're they're an energy sector. They're part
(43:31):
of the energy sector, and they do things they don't like,
things like government regulation, and they don't like things like, um,
you know, tribes or local governments having a say in
their licensing and all that stuff, so they lobby against
that kind of thing. They're you know, their corporations. So um,
it's a real problem in the in the industry that
right now they seem to be largely in favor of
(43:54):
pressing back against environmental regulations or regulations that less than
the industry 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
um they they are forced to do it the right way. Yeah,
this one in Turkey sounds like a real nasty one.
(44:17):
They're building on the Tigris. It's gonna flood ninety miles
of the river plus a hundred and fifty miles of tributaries. Um,
big time damage to the ecosystems there. And we're talking
ancient archaeological sites that are going to be wiped out,
people displaced. Uh. And a lot of people in the
international community have said, hey, uh, Turkey, why don't you
(44:38):
think about some different ways to do this, And Turkey said, no,
this is what we're doing. Uh, We're we're gonna push
forward with this. We have another one on the Euphrates
that has reduced waterflow UM to Iraq to its south
by this caused a loss of sixty acres of arable
land every year. Yeah, it's just such an astounding figure.
(45:02):
It's like, how is there any any land left? You know?
So there are fortunately a lot of people in the
industry who are, like the writings 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 to
just keep going for in this direction, so they're trying
to find ways to make it better. UM. One of
the inventions that I saw was called movable hep um
(45:24):
hydroelectric power plant. It's movable, uh, not that you just
move it wherever you want, like whenever you want, but
the actual the actual like plant itself can move up
or down basically casts. That's good. UM. It moves up
and down depending on how high or low the river is,
which is good because you know, seasonally river river height,
(45:47):
which has a huge impact on the amount of energy
it has. UM. You know ebbs and flows basically UM.
So if you can lower you know, your your your
power plant in the water further when the waters um low,
or raise it when it's high, you can also make
it easier for fish to go around above or under unobstructed,
(46:09):
which is a huge, huge bonus too. Yeah, there's another
UM couple of technologies that are very cool. One called
a v l H or u l H very low
head or ultra low head facilities. We talked about the
head as being you know, that volume of water plus
the amount of drop, and basically they just don't need
(46:29):
that much of a drop, um 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. Um.
And then these low velocity turbines. I really like this idea.
It's basically saying, hey, why don't we just concentrate on
(46:49):
or one of the things we can concentrate on is
making our turbines just super efficient and they don't have
to spend at nine d r p m s um.
They don't have to spend very fast at all. So
you can produce um, you know, maybe the same amount
of electricity without the need for those high pressure pin stocks. Right,
so the fish can just swim right through. They're morving
(47:11):
that slowly. UM. I think from what I saw, the
reason why everybody's not just going to the them the
low velocity turbines is because it's way cheaper to buy
and install and operate 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
(47:33):
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, um uh pick hydro back
up and brush it off and and actually make it green,
you know, in the near future. So I hope. So.
(47:54):
I mean, sometimes you gotta I know it's antithetical to
capitalism and ringing every last penny out of your company,
but sometimes you gotta bite the billet a little bit,
invest a little bit more in something that's better for
the world down the line, and still make gobs of
money exactly nicely put chuck, thank you. Um, you got
(48:14):
anything else? I got nothing else? I don't either, man.
So that's hydro power. Um, look for another supplement edition
of hydro or probably somewhere down the line. Uh. And
in the meantime, until then, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this a little statistical analysis from a listener,
(48:36):
and this 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 UH to me, as too 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 pique my interest on a fascinating topic when
I'm a little bored. UH. I listened every day, which
means many repeats, and I still never struggle to find
(48:58):
an episode to keep me interest did as you may
be aware, at the end of the year, UH, Spotify
gives a nice wrap up on individual listening habits. I
listened to over a hundred and ten thousand minutes on
Spotify Music and podcasts combine. In the year, I listened
to over five hundred episodes and stuff you should Know
at an accumulated twenty four thousand, two hundred and fifty
(49:21):
six minutes. My biggest streak, wow, was twenty nine episodes
and one day 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 like you'd have to be on speed
(49:42):
that day to listen to twenty nine episodes in one
bank and he's not on speed. Uh. You all have
helped me through some of the hardest times as well
as shared and some of the greatest times, all without
even knowing it. Especially this year with COVID and a
very stressful semester at law school. You truly help this
make make this year the best it could be. I
hope you had a relaxing holiday and a great start
(50:02):
to the new year. Chow Anthony, ps I love Speed
No eight Speed. That's that's great, Anthony. I'm good luck
with law school too. Um. I actually saw a couple
of people who topped his his total minutes. I think
(50:23):
somebody tweeted um, because like you can, you can tweet
that really easily or post it. I saw one and
I don't I'm sorry, I don't know what their name is,
but um, they had like fifty five thousand minutes listen
to stuff you should know the last year and that
nuts man. So hats off to everybody who listens to
(50:44):
us in general. But also if you listen to us
that much, we really appreciate you and hopefully, um we
never annoy you, Like hopefully one day it never just
clicks and you're like, I can never listen to these
guys again. Ever heard too much? You know, to be
careful out there, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Everybody be careful. Uh. If you want to get in
touch with this, like Anthony did, we love hearing from
(51:07):
our friends. That means you. You can send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(51:29):
H
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!