Comment by mtone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtone | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe it's because I'm in Canada where several provinces use hydro as a primary energy source, but why doesn't make it to the top of the lists more often?

Nearby ecosystem damages, relatively speaking, seem rather low in comparison with nuclear or fuel, and for dealing with future climate change issues in general. While they don't explode, I'm sure they can can cause disasters of their own.

But wind/solar require massive storage capacity to become a primary source and require a lot of space/disruption at these scales. I'm not sure how the affected landmass (in the long term) compares with Hydro, or maintenance costs.

Hydro has this great combination of zero emission and the water being its own battery. Not relying on rare materials and battery production avoids adding competition and could favor the transition to electric vehicles at a global scale.

Like nuclear, initial costs are problematic. Social acceptance is so-so. In some places like the US many "good spots" are taken, but it appears 2/3 of potential in the world is untapped. More numerous but smaller damns seem to be a possibility too.

First, there isn't that much Hydro around, and a lot of that has been tapped already.

Second, it's significantly less safe than nuclear. In fact, IIRC the worst single power-generation disaster was a hydro-dam failure in China.

And the environmental impact outside of accidents is also far from trivial.

I find it amazing that people go "Let's use hydro!" When a single event killed more people than all the nuclear accidents combined. Unreal.

What you propose to use instead of dams in place of flood protection?

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.

[1] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/deaths-nuclear-energy-compare...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Gover...

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.

See also: https://energypedia.info/wiki/Using_Hydro_Power_Plants_for_F... .

Hydro is great at producing low carbon energy but:

- completely destroys ecosystems and communities around it

- Can create international water disputes that threaten war (look at Ethiopia, Turkey, Tibet)

- Creates a ticking time bomb much worse then nuclear if not properly maintained

That said, situationally I think Hydro is still one of our better options.

Interesting point about water disputes, wasn't aware -- and freshwater supply is not going up in the future.

>>why doesn't make it to the top of the lists more often?

Modern thinking on hydro is changing. It can be good, but many implementations are disturbing. If you wipe out a forest then you aren't carbon neutral. And all those rotting logs under the water release gasses that are worse can CO2. So while it may be a great idea in the American southwest, it might not be a great idea to flood a rain forest in British Columbia.

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