While that's horrifying, the dam doesn't bleed radioactive particles into the atmosphere or water which sparks conversations about global catastrophic disaster

> While that's horrifying, the dam doesn't bleed radioactive particles

Another way to put it: if the worst case happens, and a dam breaks and floods a large area, you can immediately go there and walk all over the damaged area with little more protection than a pair of sturdy boots. The worst you'd find would be things like transformer oil and some generator lubricants.

You know, and all the dead people. Or the people who die in the evacuation.

> the dam doesn't bleed radioactive particles into the atmosphere

I would urge you to look at https://xkcd.com/radiation/ and compare the lines:

    Living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant for a year (0.09 µSv)
    Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant for a year (0.3 µSv)

https://isnap.nd.edu/assets/255639/radioactivity_lecture_18....

https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... (which concludes with "Thus, Malaysia needs to consider the possible future study of radiological impact from airborne routine discharges of coal-fired power plant.")

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09698... - "Detailed studies on naturally occuring radionuclide emissions due to a 2420 MW coal-fired power plant in Malaysia."

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I'm personally much less worried about the radioactive materials from a uranium nuclear power plant than I am from coal or bad decisions on how to dispose of radioactive waste products.

We'd likely lower our radioactive footprint by completely switching from coal power to uranium.

The parent comment is not comparing coal and nuclear. The parent comment is comparing hydroelectric dam failures with nuclear power plant failures (on normal operation, neither nuclear power plants nor hydroelectric power plants leak any significant amount of radiation into the atmosphere).

> the dam doesn't bleed radioactive particles into the atmosphere

Why are we still building coal plants then?

But coal most certainly does.

A nuclear plant that emitted like a coal plant would be shut down pronto.

And consider the Palo Verde nuclear plant. They had to get an NRC exemption on radioactivity of their discharge water. They had a little problem: their intake water didn't meet the discharge water requirements. They're using reclaimed sewage water--and getting the radioactivity that goes down the toilet from nuclear medicine patients.

"Directly", perhaps. But hydro is still responsible for far fewer deaths than gas, oil, or coal: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Actually that's completely backwards. Hydro is the only source that has saved thousands of lives (beyond the production of electricity element) by preventing flooding and providing a secure water supply.

Even neglecting debates about the real amount of victims from nuclear accidents, the hydro case is highly debatable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35521090

Not sure how the cultural revolution has anything to do with the number of people exposed to be killed in case of failure. In any case that's the worst one but not the only one:

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

Pretty sure that the Cultural Revolution ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution ) induced such a chaos that tackling this dam's problems was much more difficult.

List: the low amount of victims (given the amount of existing dams and electricity produced/stored) and the causes (many acts of war) seem enlightening to me. Moreover this list is laughable: Malpasset, for example, was not a hydroelectric station.