Brazil's mega dams, among world's largest, struggle due to droughts

Hydreletric have big negative impacts on local environments. Enormous areas are flooded, the course of a river is diverted, during droughts the operator will restrict the flow of water exarcebating the drought and vice-versa during floods. It's bad for fishs and other animals, it mess with their reproduction habits. It kills river navigation. The decomposition of forests and vegation under the flooded area will release a lot of methane offsetting it's "green characteristic". It puts the local population at risk because a dam can burst and wreak havoc downstream destroying everything and killing those close with no chance to escape. That's rare but pretty common if compared to nuclear accidents both on frequency and average magnitude.

For comparison:

Chernobyl disaster: 2 killed by debris (including 1 missing) and 28 killed by acute radiation sickness. 15 terminal cases of thyroid cancer, with varying estimates of increased cancer mortality over subsequent decades.

Derna dam collapse: 5,923 (confirmed). 14,000–24,000 (estimated).

The main reasons why Brazil invested in hydros instead of nuclear are:

- US embargoed Brazil's nuclear program.

- It's more attractive for those making the decisions to build dams. Brazilian civil engineering companies like Odebrecht already have the know-how to build dams and the extraoficial pocket filling channels that make politicians & authorities happy.

Enviromentalism typically is a retarded ideology that does more harm than good.