logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2023
8m 59s

World’s first tidal power station

Bbc World Service
About this episode

The world’s first tidal power station is on the estuary of the River Rance in France.

It was opened in 1966 by President Charles de Gaulle and has been capturing the natural power of the oceans’ tides and turning it into electricity ever since.

Alex Collins hears how the project to build it was a cause for national pride and how the facility is now a tourist attraction, as he speaks to Brittany historian Marc Bonnel.

(Photo: La Rance tidal power station. Credit: Getty Images)

Up next
Apr 2025
The Cu Chi tunnels of the Vietnam War
During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ... Show More
9m 43s
Aug 7
The origins of the all-inclusive holiday
Holidaymakers arrived at the first Club Med resort on the Spanish island of Majorca in the summer of 1950. Founded by the Belgian water polo player Gérard Blitz, Club Méditerranée offered a new kind of post-war holiday built around the idea that leisure should be simple, sociable ... Show More
10m 49s
Apr 2026
The world's first perfume archive
On 26 April 1990, the world's first perfume archive opened in Versailles, France.The idea behind L'Osmothèque was to create a collection of scents and preserve their memory.Perfumer Jean Claude Ellena was one of the team who created it.He speaks to Jen Dale about how L'Osmothèque ... Show More
10m 6s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2024
Tidal power: What’s holding it back?
Lake Sihwa in South Korea is home to the world’s largest operating tidal power station, using the tides to generate enough power for a city of half a million people. This regular rise and fall of the seas is more predictable than sunny or windy weather and can be forecast years i ... Show More
27m 2s
Jan 2024
Turning the tides into renewable energy
<p>Companies around the world are trying to harness the power of the tides to create a renewable energy source. Canada’s <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-bay-of-fundy-tidal-electricity/">Bay of Fundy is a promising place </a>to do it because it has the hi ... Show More
19m 49s
Mar 2024
Is tidal power a viable energy source?
The Pentland Firth is the strait that lies between the far north of mainland Scotland and the Orkney Islands. It's a wild area with some of the fastest tides in the world, where the power of the sea is being harnessed by tidal turbines sitting on the sea bed.But this type of gree ... Show More
18m 26s
May 2022
The Turn of the Tide
Mathematician Hannah Fry and geneticist Adam Rutherford investigate your everyday science queries. Today, they get stuck into two questions about tides. Lynn Godson wants to know why isn’t high tide at the same time at all points around the coast? Whilst Tim Mosedale asks, could ... Show More
27m 47s
Mar 2022
The Turn of the Tide
Mathematician Hannah Fry and geneticist Adam Rutherford investigate your everyday science queries. They get stuck into two questions about tides. Lynn Godson wants to know why isn’t high tide at the same time at all points around the coast? Whilst Tim Mosedale asks, could we ever ... Show More
34m 29s
Jan 2023
Plastics in oceans and sea cucumbers
<p>Max Pearson presents a compilation of this week's Witness History programmes from the BBC World Service.</p><p>You'll hear the story of how a marine biologist made a shocking discovery finding small bits of plastics floating thousands of miles of the east coast of America. </p ... Show More
51m 44s
Sep 2023
Green and novel: the future of energy generation
Harnessing energy directly in space and from the ocean flow 
57m 38s
May 2022
The Ebb and Flow of the Tidal Power Revolution
This week, we begin with a disturbing medical mystery. Since the start of the year, almost 200 children worldwide have fallen ill with hepatitis—or liver inflammation—without any apparent cause. Most of the children are under five, and nearly half of the cases were in the UK. Vic ... Show More
43m 50s
Sep 2025
Some dam awesome science
The inauguration of Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has us looking at how we decide when, where, and even whether to build dams.But humans aren’t the only ones building dams – Loren Taylor of the Beaver Institute joins us to talk all about nature’s hydroengineers and the wide- ... Show More
49m 29s
Apr 2018
Dams
Half of the world’s river systems host hydro-electric dams. They offer reliable electricity but their construction forces people from their homes and disrupts the natural life of the river.Scores of dams already span the Mekong River, the great waterway linking China to Vietnam. ... Show More
27m 41s