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Nuclear is also a hell of a lot safer than hydopower. The failure of just a single dam - the Banqiao in China in 1975 - killed more than 150,000 people. Way m

Nuclear is also a hell of a lot safer than hydopower. The failure of just a single dam - the Banqiao in China in 1975 - killed more than 150,000 people. Way more than all the deaths from nuclear power, ever. [1] https://www.britannica.com/event/Typhoon-Nina-Banqiao-dam-failure https://www.britannica.com/event/Typhoon-Nina-Banqiao-dam-fa...

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
One disaster... in China... skews the stats because of the high death toll. I can see how that information could be taken both ways.
- tremon 5y ago
  One disaster... in Soviet Russia... skews the nuclear incident stats as well. What's the point you think you're making?
- tuatoru 5y ago
  > One disaster... Okay, let's look at Wikipedia[1]. Random example. Val Di Stava Dam Italy 1985, 268 fatalities. Many, many more than were killed directly by Fukushima, but fewer than were killed by the stress of evacuation. Read the list. More than one dam failed, but the fatalities are accepted fatalistically and shrugged off. It seems like there is a double standard here. Disclosure: I think that as of 2019 nuclear is uneconomic and not worth building, but if the choice is between nuclear and fossil fuels, nuclear wins hands down in safety terms. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_...
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    I prefer stats over anecdotes, and both hydro and nuclear do well objectively on safety, so there's no need to use rhetorical tricks to distort things.
    - tuatoru 5y ago
      The stats say there have been more than one of each kind of failure, and removing the outliers doesn't really change things.
Tycho 5y ago
Wasn't the dam to primarily to prevent flooding, rather than enable power generation? Anyway I don't think it makes sense to compare hydro where the risk dynamics are simple, to nuclear where they are complex and require great long-term competency to mitigate.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  And then the resulting flood destroys an industrial chemical complex and the dynamics shift to complex and long term.
natmaka 5y ago
This keeps coming back, albeit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301436 And this sort of ordeal may be way more of a concern with a nuke plant.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

One disaster... in China... skews the stats because of the high death toll. I can see how that information could be taken both ways.

tremon 5y ago
One disaster... in Soviet Russia... skews the nuclear incident stats as well. What's the point you think you're making?
tuatoru 5y ago
> One disaster... Okay, let's look at Wikipedia[1]. Random example. Val Di Stava Dam Italy 1985, 268 fatalities. Many, many more than were killed directly by Fukushima, but fewer than were killed by the stress of evacuation. Read the list. More than one dam failed, but the fatalities are accepted fatalistically and shrugged off. It seems like there is a double standard here. Disclosure: I think that as of 2019 nuclear is uneconomic and not worth building, but if the choice is between nuclear and fossil fuels, nuclear wins hands down in safety terms. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_...
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  I prefer stats over anecdotes, and both hydro and nuclear do well objectively on safety, so there's no need to use rhetorical tricks to distort things.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    The stats say there have been more than one of each kind of failure, and removing the outliers doesn't really change things.

Tycho 5y ago

Wasn't the dam to primarily to prevent flooding, rather than enable power generation? Anyway I don't think it makes sense to compare hydro where the risk dynamics are simple, to nuclear where they are complex and require great long-term competency to mitigate.

Paradigma11 5y ago
And then the resulting flood destroys an industrial chemical complex and the dynamics shift to complex and long term.

natmaka 5y ago

This keeps coming back, albeit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301436 And this sort of ordeal may be way more of a concern with a nuke plant.