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Arguing that the power generation is not really at fault would be great for defending the power company from lawsuits, but it's irrelevant to determining how of

Arguing that the power generation is not really at fault would be great for defending the power company from lawsuits, but it's irrelevant to determining how often dams fail. If you're addressing a question like, say, whether it would be safer to build more nuclear power or more hydropower, then you really just need to know "if I build N dams, how many people will they kill in the next 100 years," and the same for nuclear plants. Unless you have reason to believe that hydropower dams are inherently safer than dams built primarily for other purposes, it makes sense to look at all dam failures.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Well no, it's not, because the dam would have been built anyways to prevent flooding. You'd have gotten the dam and a nuclear reactor instead of just the dam.
- DennisP 6y ago
  I'm not talking about old dams, but about building new dams specifically for the purpose of providing renewable energy. Pumped storage is the cheapest way to store excess energy from wind/solar. If we want to know the risk of doing that, we should get the largest sample size by counting all the dams.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Certainly. The issue is that the above table is weighted by TWh. If we just wanted risk/dam it would make sense, but that's not what the above table was measuring. A staggering amount of dams exist that don't generate electricity, so if I had to guess we'd be on average at around 1 death or less per dam. Personally I think that the best solution is to switch to nuclear for all the baseload and then some and convert existing dams to pumped storage if necessary.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - DennisP 6y ago
      Good point. Only dams which generate electricity should be included, so deaths/TWh makes sense. (And if there are dams which generate less electricity than they could for their size, because generation was an afterthought, that should be accounted for too.) Sounds like we agree on solutions :)

sudosysgen 6y ago

Well no, it's not, because the dam would have been built anyways to prevent flooding. You'd have gotten the dam and a nuclear reactor instead of just the dam.

DennisP 6y ago
I'm not talking about old dams, but about building new dams specifically for the purpose of providing renewable energy. Pumped storage is the cheapest way to store excess energy from wind/solar. If we want to know the risk of doing that, we should get the largest sample size by counting all the dams.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Certainly. The issue is that the above table is weighted by TWh. If we just wanted risk/dam it would make sense, but that's not what the above table was measuring. A staggering amount of dams exist that don't generate electricity, so if I had to guess we'd be on average at around 1 death or less per dam. Personally I think that the best solution is to switch to nuclear for all the baseload and then some and convert existing dams to pumped storage if necessary.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - DennisP 6y ago
    Good point. Only dams which generate electricity should be included, so deaths/TWh makes sense. (And if there are dams which generate less electricity than they could for their size, because generation was an afterthought, that should be accounted for too.) Sounds like we agree on solutions :)