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Hydro isn't unfashionable. We just don't have reasonable places to keep daming, so there's little really to talk about.

Nuclear is unfashionable, because there's huge growth potential among wealthy industrial countries, but because it's not "liked" there's very little actual growth.



> Hydro isn't unfashionable.

Its unfashionable for new capacity because much of the low-hanging fruit opportunities are plucked, and it has high upfront costs, and, while good from a climate and air pollution standpoint, it is still one of the most enviromentally destructive energy sources.

Also, while it doesn’t induce climate change, it can be vulnerable to climate change.


Creating artificial lakes is the definition of climate change. Taking what was a flowing river and converting it into a huge lake massively changes the climate of the area.


> it doesn’t induce climate change

You could make climate change worse through bad natural water management. E.g. you could create a desert, or something in between.


It IS unfashionable, dams are actively being removed across the US in order to restore the ecosystems they shattered. Migratory fish and all predators higher up the trophic chain are devastated by any type of dam.


I'm wondering if we should even accept the framing of that as "fashion" and not "large-scale action spurred by a rational shared reevaluation of impact"


Totally agree, the hydroelectric juice wasn't worth the squeeze on our ecosystem.


There are fish ladders, at least we have them in Europe along river dams.

When I think about the giant five valley hydroplant in China, the giant Euphrat hydroplant or the giant Nile hydroplant of Aegypt, I think its more the abscence of political force which could move ten thousands of people out of the way.


Fish ladders are completely ineffective [1].

[1] https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl....


Mostly smaller dams that were built a long time ago. They would need to be replaced anyways, so just tearing them down and not replacing them is economical and ecological.

But the big ones built in the last 100 years are going to stick around for awhile.


Not because they are less damaging, but because Big Ag has enough influence to keep them in place.


Fun fact, the Australian Green Party was born protesting renewable electricity. They stopped the development of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania.

"In the late 1970s and 1980s, a public campaign to prevent the construction of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania saw environmentalist and activist Norm Sanders elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly as an Australian Democrat. Brown, then director of the Wilderness Society, contested the election as an independent, but failed to win a seat.[3]"

From

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

The founder of the Green, Bob Brown, now opposes wind farms in Tasmania.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Brown#Opposition_to_a_Tasm...


This is the answer, if there were places we could generate a lot of hydro power we already would be.


There are plenty of places we could make hydro power tomorrow if we weren't concerned with displacing people.


Nuclear fell out of fashion because people do not understand statics and were unable to address peoples concern about their safety.


Conveniently ignoring the extreme cost of nuclear power. The power companies simply do not want to invest billions and then wait 7+ years, assuming there are no project delays or cost overruns (which there always are). Renewables and natural gas are much cheaper.


"Renewables" cost our government here in Ontario.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/06/07/kathleen-wynne-ran-en...

They were in power for ~11 years, but thanks to their "green energy" programs they not only lost the election, they lost political party status and have yet to regain it.

Renewables are not cheaper.

"The FAO estimates that the renewable generation subsidy program will cost the Province a net $2.8 billion over the first three years of the program, from 2020-21 to 2022-23. The FAO's three-year cost estimate is significantly higher than the Province's cost estimate of $1.3 billion reported in the 2020 Ontario Budget."

These long-term "green energy" programs were expensive, and the government knowingly lied about how much it would cost.


You gave nothing to compare those prices to so it's impossible to determine cheaper or not cheaper.


The extreme cost of nuclear power are partially the fault of scaremongers stopping all production of them in the west. China has 100s being built or planned and obviously they can't cost 10s of billions each.

Thanks for blackouts when it's cloudy and not windy.


China’s nuclear program is just getting started and is almost completely state funded. They only have 49 plants right now with 16 under construction, I’m not sure where your 100s came from. Their plan is to quadruple generating capacity (current at 50 Gw) to 200 Gw by 2035.

France is still the model country when it comes to nuclear power. Even in 2035, nuclear will be less than 10% of its energy mix.


China routinely announces plans for things that it does not, in the end, build.


Nuclear was simply too expensive for the other side to bother debating with the environmental opposition. Unless the government subsidizes it (construction costs), private companies aren’t going to go near it. Other renewables are simply so much more profitable these days.


Power should be a public good and not in the hands of private companies.

Macroeconomics has unfortunately fallen out of fashion on todays curricula at schools/universities.


Nuclear was perfectly affordable until laws were passed to make it unaffordable (specifically: if nuclear power happened to be cheaper than other energy sources for any reason, then it was considered to be not spending enough on safety, so it was required to spend money on marginal safety measures until it cost the same as other forms of energy).


Nuclear was, in fact, never cost-effective. No civil power nuke has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without utter dependence on massive public subsidy.

Nukes get less competitive every day. Lately, already paid-for nukes are about on par with fresh-built solar or wind,big you neglect the disaster liability subsidy. But wind and solar costs are still falling.


hydro and nuclear need the very same turbine tech, and actually turbine are the most hi-tech part of the game, reactors demand delicate construction and testing, but behind that are not much complex.

Oh, sure, IF you have a vast set of mountains and much water, let's say Norway, developing hydro is obvious. Just a bit more populated countries, let's say Swiss do want both simply because one offer good power for most of the year but not enough safety to relay on and so having two systems is better than one. If you have no suitable areas, let's say Mongolia, and you do not have the tech for nuclear... Than they are both unfashionable.

That's the practical "fashionable" or "unfashionable" part. Anything you can have, is fashionable if gives you something useful, anything who can gives you something useful but you can't have........


Hydro power turbines and nukes' steam turbines are similar only in the name, and that just because both turn.


They are both build with the same industrial process, demand similar alloys, similar CFD calculus etc. Witch means: if you can build one for hydro you can build one for nuclear. If you can't for nuclear than you can't equally for hydro and vice versa.

That's why they are a big business for very few developed countries supply chain. Do NEVER forget that anything at a certain scale is a matter of know how, supply chain and raw materials. Formally knowledge is "open in science" but that's just PR, in the modern world almost without public research and public universities knowledge is power and is in private hands to a point of being a danger for the society at a whole.


They do not, in fact, demand similar alloys. A hydro power turbine operates with liquid water, a steam turbine with superheated, corrosive steam.

A Pelton wheel is fundamentally different in every detail from a steam turbine. Useful Pelton wheels have been made in village smitheries. They are readily mass-produced, and last many decades without need for service.


Actually the Yosemite valley has significant hydro potential.


And it better be left alone. Hetch Hetchy has already been destroyed, we should preserve what little we have left.


Isn't that all protected wilderness though?


Of course, I'm saying

> We just don't have reasonable places to keep daming

Isn't super true from an energy perspective.


Germany is anecdotally facing an Energy crisis Nuclear power:no. Wind energy: off shore out of sight yes, but not on my mountain. Russian gas: no (more). Coal instead? No! So eveyone will install mini PV systems and become self-sufficient?

First this wont work during the cold season and how incredible inneficient is this going to be?

I think we must stop to outsource providing cheap energy to poor countries and tap on our.shoulders how green we are. Lithium batteries? Fine, but no lithium mine round my corner!


There is no lithium to mine around your corner. Half of all known deposits on Earth are in Bolivia and Argentina.


Is France around the corner from Germany? Because France has lithium.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/10/24/frances-massive-ne...


Yeah but that's really just because of globalization and marginal cost. Lower-quality Lithium reserves are in a ton of places but most countries have punted the environmental cost and hassle to the cheapest places to mine it.




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