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Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

Hydro dams are the greenest at scale, but I agree, Germany likely can't do a dam.

I'd rather have nuclear than hydro. Hydro requires a fairly drastic alteration of a large amount of land and probably uses about the same if not more concrete than a nuclear power plant. You can't put hydro just anywhere, it comes with risks to downstream people and infrastructure, the reserve of water is not directly controllable, they're usually quite remote which requires miles of high voltage transmission lines be built across sometimes otherwise pristine land, the dams themselves can seriously impact rivers and the wildlife that live in and around them. That's just what I could rattle off in a few minutes, I'm sure there are more reasons why they're not ideal.

Paper arguments.

All that happens with a dam, is one ecosystem is replaced with another. Some animals die off, others replace them.

Literally, a dam isn't replacing the tiniest part of an ecosystem in Quebec. Trillions of acres, upon trillions, and only thousands for dams.

Meanwhile, there are far more deadly things with nuclear plants.

I think I'm lucky in Quebec, as such dams can be located away from people, thus reducing danger of a dam breaking.

The biggest mistake environmentalists ever made, was to fight dams. You cannot even remotely compare burning coal, or gas, or oil for power, with a dam.

Yet environmentalists fought dams, and nuclear in the 70s, the 60s, and look where we are now.

Still spewing CO2 like mad.

How about we jump up and down for joy, at a dam, or a nuclear plant instead of naysaying either?

Priorities...

Ok so two points somewhat mollified depending on geography and ecology, if you happen to live somewhere with trillions of acres of land with ample rivers then you're A-OK but if you instead are somewhere with only a few major rivers and higher population density you're up the creek so to speak. What about the rest?

This is why I said not for Germany.

I don't see the rest as major issues. Again, power lines through a tiny tiny tiny fraction of nature are not a biggie.

I just always have to compare... coal? Weird plans to pump CO2 underground, as if it'll never escape?

I prefer dams over nuclear. Beavers cause more change on rivers than our dams.

But I am not against nuclear!

So-called green energy is not harmless for the environment. To clearcut square miles for solar farms then cover them over so plants can't grow, is akin to sterilizing the environment under them. Complete ecological disaster.

Hydro is great for boaters and sport fishing, but no so much for the ecosystem it drowned. And it's always square miles of devastating rapid change.

Dams also cause huge ecological damage - there's no easy solution. Nuclear is good if (and this is a big if) the nuclear wastes are managed properly. Even then, right now sometimes it feels like nuclear waste is currently treated as the "next generations" problems.

We can re-use nuclear waste now. Something like 90% of "waste" can be recycled and reused. It's not like we're just shoving it in yucca mountain anymore.

Not to mention that the amount of nuclear waste is absolutely tiny. If we can solve the political problem of where to store it then we could feasibly keep all of the nuclear waste ever produced in a single location far away from anyone or anything. I'd much rather have a nuclear waste storage site near where I live than live near a gas plant constantly spewing emissions into the air. I can tell where the nuclear waste is, I have no control over where the wind blows and which air I breathe.

Not really. That is the dream of the fast reactor. It had been ongoing since the 50s. All attempts have been more costly than uranium reactors and there's only one in Russia which has operated with any kind of longevity.

They also have proliferation concerns and have therefore been limited to nuclear powers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor

they don't scale well unless you're in a country with lots of rivers that haven't been used. Most countries don't have that, like they don't have thermal. You can throw up a lot of power plants gas/coal/nuclear in most places though.

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