4 ms·

I understand the complaint against coal power plants, but you're not saying that nuclear power plant or large dams cause health issues, right?

• bad_haircut72 1y ago
  large dams do have pretty big environmental effects
  • lazide 1y ago
    None of them that impact people’s health.
    • dredmorbius 1y ago
      Not even remotely true. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_...> And that's just the direct impacts from failure. Long-term environmental costs are real, if indirect. I write this somewhat reluctantly as hydro is carbon-neutral,* and affords one of the better energy-storage options, as pumped hydro. Even allowing that dam failures tend to occur under regimes with significant organisational issues (low trust, low public concern, low levels of organisation, conflicted interests), dams have a pretty horrific track record for direct fatalities. Almost all those risks are mitigatable, and the underlying root cause (organisational dysfunction) would likely create similar risk patterns for other energy modalities. But we have a direct history to point to. I've written on this topic a few times at HN should you or others be interested, I do hope my thoughts come across as nuanced, as they in fact are: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20Banqiao&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
      • lazide 1y ago
        ‘Health’ is generally used to refer to things like pollution, etc. that cause long term chronic impacts. Not individual sudden events which drown/murder massive numbers of people regardless of their general health status (except perhaps for their ability to run really fast and really far on no notice). Those are referred to as ‘disasters’.
        • trillic 1y ago
          Public health includes drowning……
          • lazide 1y ago
            Yeah, individually. Like in pools. Dam failures are an entirely different department. Or just FEMA/military.
        • dredmorbius 1y ago
          Death is a health risk. So are cholera and other diseases accompanying flooding. And other factors associated with reservoirs: desertification and lake evaporation can lead to increased dust, common where water is diverted or impounded (Aral Sea, Lake Powell, Lake Mead). Disruption of silt flows has various impacts, more on the general environmental side. Generally, if your concern is overall mortality risk rather than a specific disease/pollution mechanism, dams do not get a free pass.
          • lazide 1y ago
            The public health department doesn’t concern itself with things like national defense, if skyscrapers are likely to fall over or not, and local gang violence. Those have their own specialities. Otherwise, literally everything is a ‘health issue’, including agriculture and commercial/residential zoning. And notably, no one has actually provided any examples of where any of these are actually in major cities. Because it’s absurd, hah.
• testing22321 1y ago
  Nukes don’t often cause health issues, but from time to time…