I'm about 30km outside Reykjavík, in Iceland. And yes, earlier today, I was swimming in
power plant wastewater. Which is not something I'd usually recommend. If you were at a coal-fired power plant, well, even if you were just
swimming in the water that had been boiled to spin the turbines
and then cooled back down again, well, there are enough stories about
coal ash contamination, with arsenic and mercury and selenium,
that it would not be safe. For gas and nuclear plants, as long as the water's
treated on the way out, you'd probably be fine? I think? It's one of those things where I wouldn't
want to chance it. But that blue-white water is in the Blue Lagoon. Now, the management there are very careful
about how they phrase it. They prefer to talk about the
skin care and health benefits that they claim come from
the silica in the water, but... yeah, it's geothermal power plant wastewater. Okay, a quick diversion here: most cities
in the world have a cold water mains supply. There's a grid of cold water to all
the houses and buildings, and it's heated on-demand when it's needed
in each building. But Iceland is geologically active: in parts of the country, there are
high-pressure reservoirs of hot water not too far underground,
where underground rivers meet hot rocks. In some places, those reservoirs break through
and reach the surface naturally. So near those places, it's economical to drill
a borehole down into the ground and capture the superheated, high-pressure
steam and water that come back up. There are two things you can do with that
hot water and steam. It's not drinkable, first of all, it's filled with silica and other bits of
dissolved rock, but you can put it in a heat exchanger, and use it to heat up fresh, clean cold water, and then you can send the resulting
clean hot water down a pipeline to paying customers. And this is one of those pipelines! There is hot water speeding
through this to Reykjavík. It doesn't actually feel warm,
if it did the pipe wouldn't be doing its job, because the water only loses a couple of degrees
over dozens of kilometres, but yes, hot water speeding through that. Icelandic cities have separate
hot water and cold water grids. If your home is connected to that grid you
don't need a water heater. So, okay, that's hot water.
If you want electricity instead, you can spin a turbine using the
high-pressure steam that's coming up, and generate clean power that way.
Technically, you can do both, but pipelines are expensive and there's a
lot of hot water around here, so often it's just electricity or hot water. Even a massive, industrial-size geothermal
borehole will last a few decades before it starts to run out of heat,
and when that happens, you can just open another one
a few kilometres away. The old one will get back up to temperature
sooner or later, the Earth is not going to run out of heat. Which means Iceland has a
massive supply of hot water. High up on a hill above Reykjavík, there's
this beautiful building called Perlan. It's got exhibitions about the
natural wonders of Iceland and a revolving restaurant
and an observation deck. But the big round things on the outside aren't
part of the exhibitions: they're the enormous hot water storage tanks
that the building was built around. Perlan is a water tower, just like any other
you'd find around the world, except it stores hot water. There's so much of it that,
while it's not free, it's very very cheap. If your house is a bit too warm in winter
in Iceland, you don't turn the heating down: you just open a window and
let some fresh air in. Iceland also has quite a lot of fresh air. When it's snowing, the pavements are heated
up by hot water pipes underneath. Last time I was here was in winter, the lake behind City Hall was frozen over,
the ice was strong enough to safely walk on. In one corner, there's a pipe constantly pouring
a bit hot water into that lake, just so the ducks have somewhere to swim. And yes, there are natural hot springs
elsewhere in Iceland, there are natural hot spring beaches
elsewhere in the world, but Reykjavík has an
artificial hot water beach: they just pump hot water into that lagoon
to heat it up a bit. There's a hot tub down there! But this isn't power plant wastewater. It's regular water, like you'd get out of
the cold tap in your home, just heated up in a heat exchanger by the
high-pressure undrinkable water and steam that comes up from the boreholes
at the geothermal power plants. The two never touch. So there's one loose end here: after that high-pressure steam comes up to
the surface and gets used… where does it go? Well, once it's cooled down a bit,
the geothermal plants just dump the water out onto nearby rocks. Those rocks are permeable,
the water slowly sinks through them, and over decades it will make its way back
to where it came from. Mostly. When you're dumping that much water out, though, it will tend to form pools and… lagoons. Particularly when it's got
a lot of silica in it. And the story from there is simple: someone went bathing in one of those pools,
thought it helped their skin condition, and a few decades of construction
and marketing later the Blue Lagoon is one of the
"wonders of the world" and they charge more than
€30 for a basic ticket. And I don't want to knock that too much! Because yes, there is some research that says
bathing in geothermal water like that helps some skin conditions,
and there is a big difference between wild swimming in a
mysterious hot-water pool and bathing in a well-regulated
geothermal spa that gives you a towel and
offers in-water massages. But if you feel like being cynical, then yes, that is power plant wastewater. Whew. Iceland is beautiful. Bit wet. But beautiful.
I grew up swimming at a place on Lake Erie we called "the cut." It was just a cut in the cliffside where you could walk down to a small beach. The beach was literally 50 feet away from a power plant. The water was always 85 degrees at least. It was awesome.
you can swim in warm water with the manatees by our power plant. Sign me up!
Blue lagoon is a great final stop before getting on the plane home. It's close to the airport.
Ever since MattColbo made that parody video I can't stop noticing Tom's little mannerisms and habits.
Great excuse to go to Iceland Tom. Cheers!
I consider Tom Scott to be a personal, mortal enemy of mine.
In Addition to this. Hot water in Iceland is INSANELY hot. Like you'll get seriously burnt hot.
Also it smells like farts from the sulpher.
But the cold tap water is glorious.
I've been there. It's really, really nice. Especially when the air is 2-3C. It's super relaxing. And if, like mine, your plane gets in at 4am, it's a great way to relax in the morning before checking into your hotel
I would if it kills me superfast