[stephanheijl]

> has less catastrophic failure modes

Given incidence of dam bursts like the 1975 Banqiao dam failure[1], with an estimate death toll of 26,000 to 240,000 people and flooding of over 12,000 square kilometers, I'm inclined to disagree with this assessment.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

[goohle]

Can you compare number of deaths because of dam failure with number of deaths because of flood and no dam to protect from flood? I.e. should we stop to build dams for flood protection because of telegraph failure at Banqiao dam?

[stephanheijl]

I am not claiming we should not have dams, or refrain from using dams to provide hydroelectricity. My point of contention is the assertion that hydro energy has less catastrophic failure modes than nuclear (presumably fission). Clearly the failure modes for hydro dams are at least on par with those of nuclear installations, given that we have historic evidence that they can inflict tens of thousands of casualties.

Hypothetical scenarios can be constructed for both methods of power generation (What if Braidwood plant melts down, somehow killing the 5 million people living within a 50 mile radius? What if the Three Gorges Dam busts, inundating an area inhabited by 600 million people?[1]) Either way, it is far from obvious to me that hydro has the superior safety profile, especially when their fatality rates are on the same order of magnitude even when the Banqiao incident is removed[2]*.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210620174812/https://www.japan... p/opinion/2020/09/01/commentary/world-commentary/big-china-disaster/

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

* Sovacool et al. (2016), the source of the data in [2] includes a hydro fatality rate per tWh 2.4x larger than nuclear when Banqiao is included.

[heavenlyblue]

"We should not do tooth fillings because tooth fillings fail and then you're in pain"