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A comment on Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power. Parent comment

Re:Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power by MichaelApproved on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @01:06PM (#13988339)
Wind, solar, dams and wave. They may not replace coal and other fossil fuels today but we can substitute a lot of our energy needs with a concerted effort into those renewables.
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Re:Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power by vkou on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @01:19PM (#13988483)
I've got some bad news about hydro dams for you.

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

> 1,917 deaths

> 26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless.

> 1800 - 25000 people killed

> 75 fatalities, due to turbine failure

There's also the part where we have tapped out the Earth's exploitable hydro capacity. Hydro output is expected to grow by ~20% by 2050. [1]

Unfortunately, it needs to grow by ~200%, if we want it to replace even half of the electricity currently generated by coal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Future_potent...

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Re:Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power by djsumdog on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @03:47PM (#13989890)
Hydro is also terrible for river ecology. Egypt gained a multi-billion dollar fertiliser industry (that didn't exist before) after they added dams to the Nile.

Dams hold back silt and sediment essential to farm land and despite everything you learned about fish ladders and salmon, they don't really work as well as the power companies say.

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Re:Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power by markvdb on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @03:07PM (#13989552)
A large part of hydro actually is storage rather than production though. It's most valuable as a stabiliser for the electricity network.
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Re:Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power by vkou on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @06:19PM (#13991153)
Yes, but it also doubles up as a fairly reliable source of baseline power.

It's a great energy source. It's also incredibly dangerous, and cannot replace coal.

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