Hydro dams and flood dams are different. I really do not understand the point you are making. I want to highlight that the fear around nuclear is not rational since you need to compare the risk profile of the alternatives and it seems some people completely fail to do so.
For the record, I didn't say I fear nuclear. I'd pick Nuclear over coal any day. I'm not for or against any particular technology.
In normal circumstances Hydro seems among the safest [1] for both humans and the environment all things relative. It has served Quebec quite well at least with very low electricity rates and emissions, and environmental impacts are likely long paid off with no radioactive waste to manage. Being in a low populated region (a rare asset..) also helps on the safety side.
Bringing up a single dam incident due to an estimated once-in-2-millenia rainfall/typhoon [2] in a populated region to dismiss an entire renewable energy source.. sounds like that kind of irrational fear you mention.
I think the arguments around possible lack of locations, costs, planning, and water supplies are more relevant -- and affect both hydro and nuclear. Those are also what make wind/solar interesting -agility- as tech improves.
I was not being dismissive to your comment specifically, but the position where people are terrified of nuclear but don't even blink at hydro is just strange to me. Your post was quite reasonable, so I apologize if I worded it too strongly.
> Bringing up a single dam incident due to an estimated once-in-2-millenia rainfall/typhoon [2] in a populated region to dismiss an entire renewable energy source.. sounds like that kind of irrational fear you mention
Yes, this is an excellent example. Similar ish kind of attenuating circumstances at Fukushima. But people don't now go "hydro is unsafe" as they go with nuclear.
I am not against hydro, by all means let's leverage it as much as possible. I am just against coal plants and want to live in a sustainable world and the only path I see right now is nuclear. If we can get there with renewables, great, let's! I just think we can not at the moment and am unwilling to risk our entire species on the tradeoff that we have 2,4,10? nuclear fallout accidents of the scale we had every 50 years.
Besides, I think that if we were to deploy nuclear at scale, most of the problems will go away with time. Scale makes things safer, cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain.
Yep, but hydro dams are used to control floods too, so they save people from floods as part of their operation. An improperly maintained dam can increase risk of flood, of course.
