Have you ever considered what would happened if there were a nuclear plant in our

country. Maybe the best answer would be to flee far away from here; but in fact, there is a
great risk for people who live close to our biggest hydraulic plant of being affected in a
worst way than those who lived in Armero. Even, it has been said that the magnitude of the
disaster will be at least as the one of Chernobyl.
So, the situation of hidroituango should concern all of us, not only because our taxes has
been taken to build that and will be taken to pay for the injuries, but also because 150000
people have been affected and they are under a really huge risk of death.
So today, I want to explain you two key points in order to understand what has happened in
hidroituango; those to great key points are: at first, how a hydraulic plant works and
second, what went wrong in hydroituango.
Let us begin then; First of all, we have to know that our biggest energy source in Colombia
is water; in fact, around 70% of the total energy we use comes from water resources. That
energy is produced because the sun boils the water of lakes and oceans; then, when it rains,
that water is collected into rivers that transport it to the sea. As the water moves, it carries
energy that depends on its speed.
In order to get that energy from the water it is necessary to build a dam; a dam is like a wall
whose function is to accumulate a great amount of water in order to supply cities with
energy and water. There have been built a lot of dams all over the world since the ancient
times. Most of the times, on the top of the dam it is built a road in order to allow cars and
trains to cross the river.
Once the dam has been built, it is necessary to place some spillways in order to evacuate
the excess of water during the winter. The spillways can be understood as a siphon that
allows water to continue its trip to the sea. There are several kinds of spillways; in the
pictures you can see two of the most common.
After we guarantee there would not be any kind of flood, it is time to focus on the
powerhouse. The power house is the place where actually the energy carried by the water is
transformed in electrical energy that is the kind of energy you use to charge your
cellphones, to heat water to take a wash or to watch the world cup match. The process of
transforming the hydraulic energy into electrical energy is carried out with two devices, the
turbine and the generator. In Colombia, most of the turbines we have are like the one of the
picture that is called Pelton turbine.
There is another component of a hydraulic plant that actually is not used when the plant is
working, but is a key part when the dam is being built. It is the tunnel. The tunnel allows
the river to continue its trip to the sea meanwhile the dam is built. Once the dam is finished,
the tunnels are closed. The tunnels are really huge due to the fact that they have to carry
great amounts of water. The tunnel from the picture is one of the tunnels that were built in
hidroituango.
So, once we have had a brief introduction to hydraulic power and hydraulic plants, it is time
to focus on what have happened in hidroituango. It was in 1960 when someone came up
with the idea of building a hydraulic plant there in order to produce cheap energy for our
nation. But, it wasn’t until 2010 when the building process began. It was expected that this
year, or at maximum the next one hidroituango would begin working. Unfortunately, on
April 29 the problems began. At that time, only one tunnel was in service, but the mountain
where it had been dug collapsed and the tunnel got plugged.
As a consequence, the water level began increasing unabated; the problem was that the dam
did not reach the high of the spillways and because of that, the river began spilling over the
dam. It could have destroyed the dam’s foundation. So the solution to prevent that was to
allow water to cross trough the power house. However, as it hadn’t been finished, all the
electrical and mechanical equipment were lost.
Meanwhile, the dam was finished reaching a height of 410 meters. Nevertheless, a lot of
experts have suggested to increase the height until 430 meters. Besides, there has been
detected some cracks on the dam that could get the dam broken in the future. Of course this
is a great challenge since around 150000 people lives close to the river and if the dam got
broken they would be sweep.
Right now, some experts have said it is necessary to destroy the dam little by little in order
to allow the river go by its original pathway, and of course forsaking the idea of building
and electric plant in that place, especially because of the ground’s instability