This Huge Mining Pit Is About To Be A Lake
Short Wave
NPR
4.7 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2024
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The largest one will be the biggest artificial lake in Germany when it's done, with a shoreline of 26 kilometers or about 16 miles all around.
But it's not as easy as simply filling the holes with water. It takes a LOT of research to get this science right.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This message comes from Side Note by ASAP Science, a podcast about the science behind controversial subjects. |
| 0:06.6 | Is marijuana addictive? How will the universe end? |
| 0:10.1 | Hosts Mitch and Greg dissect a new topic every Wednesday on your favorite podcast app. |
| 0:15.9 | You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. |
| 0:22.2 | Hey, Shortwaivers, Emily Kwong here, and I am joined by Planet Money producer Willa Rubin. |
| 0:27.4 | Willa. Hey, what's up? |
| 0:28.7 | Hey, Emily. Hey, Shortwave. I come to you with a story. |
| 0:33.2 | All right, let's hear it. |
| 0:34.1 | So, about two hours southeast of Berlin, there's a city called Kotbus. |
| 0:43.9 | It's pretty small, about 100,000 people live there. |
| 0:47.7 | For context, this is in eastern Germany, near the Polish border. |
| 0:51.9 | And so historically, this part of Germany had a lot of lignite mining. |
| 0:56.6 | This is a fossil fuel that is dark brown, it's soft, it's kind of like an intermediate |
| 1:01.0 | between hard coal and petroleum coke. |
| 1:04.1 | Oh, interesting. I've never heard of this. Okay, lignite. |
| 1:06.3 | Yeah, lignite. |
| 1:07.4 | Then after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and Germany reunified East and West in the early 90s, |
| 1:15.5 | a lot of mines in the former East shut down, mostly for economic reasons, or they ran out of coal. |
| 1:23.7 | Then there was this pressing problem. There were a bunch of holes in the ground that used to be mines, |
| 1:31.4 | but now looked like a landscape of Swiss cheese, which is not awesome aesthetically or safety-wise. |
| 1:41.1 | And so the city of Kotbuss has a really interesting plan. And one sweltering day in September, |
| 1:50.0 | I went to go see one of these pits, 20 minutes east of the city. |
... |
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