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.
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Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's here too, somewhere not just in spirit, but like digitally virtually. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, and we're going to take a break and talk about the types of modern hydro power right after this. Okay, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 a whole plant in the river. But the key here is is that they're not like you said, They're not like trying to keep the water blocked up behind a dam. But there's still probably a drop because again, this hydraulic head is basically the key to hydroelectric power. Generation right now. I think the conduit, which is a subtype of the diversion 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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? 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. H