That dam was built to prevent and mitigate damage during floods (besides producing electricity).
Was it built to insufficient specifications? Absolutely! But building less dams does NOT lead to less victims during flooding, because the flooding then just happens completely uncontrolled. Spoiler alert: "Just not build any dams" doesn't do shit against flooding if you get 1m of rainfall within a day, and the people just die from starvation/infectious diseases instead (which is the source of >50% of the victims in the Banqiao incident, too), possibly in even greater numbers, because you have flooding everywhere.
> Just in 2018 the Oroville Dam failure caused the evacuation of 180 000 people. That's more people than were evacuated due to Fukushima.
Are you suggesting that we would have to evacute less people during rain if we did not build dams? Because that is the critical flaw in your argument that I'm pointing out.
> Are you suggesting that we would have to evacute less people during rain if we did not build dams
Are you suggesting that more people would have died had we replaced all coals plants with nuclear decades ago?
Because obviously the opposite is true.
Damns reduce the amount of people who drown during natural floods. Nuclear power reduces the amount of pollution and CO2 emissions (since people are just as likely to stop living in flood plains as accepting not having access to electricity)
> Are you suggesting that more people would have died had we replaced all coals plants with nuclear decades ago?
Absolutely not, and I'm not sure what I said that made you assume that.
On that topic: I do believe that the economics for nuclear power are bad, will get worse comparatively and were never really good in the first place.
I think there is a good reason that basically only a single nation on the planet went "full nuclear" for electric power (France), which they achieved basically thanks to ignoring the cost and pushing it as strategical measure instead (=> energy indepencence, specifically from oil).
If everyone around them had went full nuclear the (economical) situation would be even worse (because everyone would compete for hydro/peak power and/or forced into operating plants in load-following mode).
In conclusion: I think massive nuclear buildout would have made a lot of sense to mitigate climate change 30 years ago (but that was not really a realistic option then), and jumping on that bandwagon is no longer worth it. Just going for wind, solar, batteries and improved grid connectivity simply makes more sense now almost everywhere in my view.
That dam was built to prevent and mitigate damage during floods (besides producing electricity).
Was it built to insufficient specifications? Absolutely! But building less dams does NOT lead to less victims during flooding, because the flooding then just happens completely uncontrolled. Spoiler alert: "Just not build any dams" doesn't do shit against flooding if you get 1m of rainfall within a day, and the people just die from starvation/infectious diseases instead (which is the source of >50% of the victims in the Banqiao incident, too), possibly in even greater numbers, because you have flooding everywhere.
> Just in 2018 the Oroville Dam failure caused the evacuation of 180 000 people. That's more people than were evacuated due to Fukushima.
Are you suggesting that we would have to evacute less people during rain if we did not build dams? Because that is the critical flaw in your argument that I'm pointing out.