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Comment by ziotom78 | Hacker News Reader

What strikes me is the fact that nuclear power has received an incredible amount of backslash after the Chernobyl incident (a few thousands deaths) and the Fukushima incident (one disputed death), but hydroelectric power is considered a "good" source of energy despite a few incredibly deadly incidents:

- Banquiao (China, 1975): between 26.000 and 240.000 [1]

- Derna (Lybia, 2023): between 6000 and 20.000 deaths [2]

- Machchu (India, 1979): 5000 deaths [3]

- Vajont (Italy, 1963): 2000 deaths [4]

- Möhne dam (Germany, 1943): 1500 deaths [5]

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Derna_dam_collapse

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morvi_dam_failure

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6hne_Reservoir

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I think this line of thinking comes from a westernized world where all water is controlled.

Many dams have been built around the world not for power generation, but to control flooding. The power generation is a secondary concern.

In aggregate dams have saved far more lives, by managing flood waters.

The great thing in 2025 is that we don’t need either the dam or nuclear risk for our electricity needs.

Just build renewables and storage and the risk for the general public is as close to zero as we can get. The only people involved in accidents are those that chose to work in the industry installing and maintaining the gear.

We should of course continue to focus on work place safety but for the general public the risk of a life changing evacuation, radiation exposure or flood from dam failure does not exist.

As you say, dams are a net positive, and while failures do happen, these days we tend to be wiser about where we put PHES in particular.

I guess I’m surprised it isn’t more of an option for California - the U.K. uses Snowdonia as a giant battery, and afaik there’s been one failure of a dam that wiped half of trefriw off the map a century ago - which wasn’t hard as it’s a speck of a place. Since then the lakes have pretty reliably and safely provided somewhere to stick excess energy, and now are largely pumped by the offshore wind arrays nearby.

California has big mountains, but I’m not sure if the geology or terrain is right for PHES.

And the environmental impact up and downstream (both for failure cases and regular operation).

In Quebec, most of the dams are in the middle of nowhere, but your point still stands.

There are costs/risks for most forms of power. If you're in an environment where wind and solar can make economical sense, go for it. For reliable base loads, I still think order of preference should be:

- geothermal (very rare and hard to do at scale, though) - hydro

- nuclear

- natural gas

- oil/diesel (at very small, localized levels eg remote villages)

- burning live babies and cute animals

- coal

Did you really just attribute the deaths from a bombing raid on a dam during WW2 to a hydropower incident?

If a nuclear reactor was bombed during the war, would the resulting deaths be counted as a nuclear disaster and used as argument against it, or just another war crime? Depends who you ask I'd say.

I was going to reply, but kakacik already said what I wanted.

Is Fukushima generally attributed to the Tsunami or to nuclear power?

Does that really matter? The cleanup costs are still socialized.

It is time we move on from the fossil tradition of socialized losses on private profits [1] and instead let the nuclear industry bear their true insurance cost.

No externalizing of costs like today.

[1]: https://www.imo.org/en/about/conventions/pages/international...

It does if you complain that a hydropower disaster had a different proximate cause, which the person I replied to did.

The whole intermittent renewables scam is private profits and socialized losses.

Not sure why you got so worked up?

Then I suppose nuclear power is also a scam given thant 45% of the capacity in Sweden was out last week and we all know how it went for the French during the energy crisis. [1]

The electricity grid is fundamentally running on marginal cost. How will you force everyone with rooftop solar and home batteries to buy horrendously expensive new built nuclear power when they can supply their own electricity?

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fra...

Who is worked up? You seem to be. Why?

I am just correcting misinformation and disinformation.

And no, you suppose incorrectly.

Intermittent renewables are a scam, because they get to privately reap benefits and socialize their costs, particularly their intermittency.

They can be useful, as long as they have to bear the costs of being intermittent. That means at minimum no feed-in priority and no fixed and/or guaranteed feed-in prices. Ideally, they would be required either (a) provide guaranteed power or (b) only be allowed to feed in after all the reliable plants.

Well, (b) would imply (a), so let's go with that.

This tells me you don't know how a grid works. You do know that the demand is variable right?

With the same reasoning nuclear power is a scam because it can't adapt to the grid demand and forces gas peakers to sit in standby. Socializing the losses, to use your words.

In California the grid shifts between ~15 GW at the minimum and 52 GW at the peak.

When studies have looked at the difference in dispatchable power required comparing majorly renewables or nuclear powered grids when meeting true a grid demand the difference is quite small.

It does favor nuclear power but the differences are not significant in the grand scheme of things when factoring in the absolutely stupid cost for new built western nuclear power.

These studies of course did not take into account 45% of the nuclear fleet being offline, they modeled it based on their average ~85% capacity factor.

Or are you suggesting that we should have peaking nuclear plants to match grid demand? So it isn't a scam for the ratepayers?

The one who doesn't know how the grid works is you.

Some demand is variable. But a lot (usually most) is not. So having reliable base generation is highly valuable and not having that base-load generation ramp up and down is a feature, not a bug.

Intermittent generation is not variable, it is intermittent. Whereas to meet variable demand it would need to be dispatchable. Look it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation

Intermittent renewables are not dispatchable. Not even a bit.

The US nuclear fleet's CF has hovered over 90%. France's is only in the high 70s or low 80s because they do extensive load following (the stuff you say nuclear can't do...they've only been doing it for four decades or so).

France took its fleet offline in the summer of 2022, because that is where demand is lowest and generation from intermittent renewables is highest, for example Germany typically has to give away lots of electricity (or even pay consumers to get rid of it) because of their guaranteed feed-in.

In the end, France had to import only 4% of its electricity even in 2022, and most of that was in the summer, again where electricity prices are lowest because of high generation and low demand. And during all the other years it tends to be largest exporter of electricity in Europe if not the world.

Love it. Just pretend that you can separate the grid into a ”baseload” portion and ”everything” else.

Like I said, on a yearly basis the Californian grid goes from 15GW to 50 GW.

That your nuclear grid will collapse when a cold spell hits leading to people freezing to death is fine.

Thats a socialized loss! Someone else will need to solve it!

I love that you completely ignored the Swedish example from last week.

And then with a sleight of hand ignored that the French nuclear issues persisted throughout the entire energy crisis winter.

LOL.

Like France's grid has collapsed every year for the last 40 years.

And of course California's grid is well known for its stability. Or was that brownouts, rolling blackouts and high prices? Well, one of the two.

Nice chatting with you. Well, amusing at least.

Sweden just approved new nuclear construction, after rescinding a nuclear exit.

So it is apparently fine to balance a nuclear grid with fossil fuels????

Just pretend that the fossil fuels doesn’t exist by exporting the nuclear electricity and have someone else build them and balance both grids!

What do you think would happen if you tried sticking two French grids with an over supply of nuclear powered electricity when no one wants the electricity next to each other?

You mean the brownouts storage and renewables have now completely fixed?

Yeah, way faster than handouts to new built nuclear power and waiting until the 2040s for the solution!

> Sweden just approved new nuclear construction, after rescinding a nuclear exit.

Yes. The current government has spent soon four years pushing paperwork around. They want nuclear power without having to accept the costs.

They seem to not want to have the costs associated with new built nuclear power subsidies on their political records for their entire careers.

I bet they will push through a monstrous handout package the final weeks before the election next September and then spend years crying about it being cut.

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