Apart from regretting the terrible loss of life, some are now starting to wonder if China's massive hydrpower expansion plans - an additional 170 GW by 2020 - will be scaled back in the face of the earthquake. No dams have actually burst, but cracks were found in one major dam in Sichuan province and allegedly, according to this wiki, 391 other dams. It seems to be the smaller and possibly older, dams that  are most vulnerable.

China's hydropower plans may be small compared to their coal-plant construction - an addtional 91 GW last year alone. Yet their vast hydropower expansion is completely without precedent in the history of the world. If you look round the globe, it tends to be that the ideal sites for hydro assets were originally created by tectonic activity - i.e. mountain ranges with deep gorges. Today of course, you just want those locations to be dormant. A quick look at this map of Quake Epicentres in 1963 - 1998 tells you that China is far from quiescent in earthquake activity. And at 7.8 on the Richter scale, this was their largest earthquake in 58 years.

Ultimately, all dams can potentially fail, because it is impossible to build something that can last forever. So repairs to cracks in the concrete structure has be factored in at some point in the future. I suspect this happens quite often and we don't hear much about it. The bottom line is, cracks in dams are - and have always been - a problem for the hydropower industry. But they are not an  insurmountable one. And my guess is that China's thirst for at least some clean power is simply too great to scale back the hydro programme in favour of coal.

And one final point. It's erroneous to believe that hydropower is uniquely vulnerable to earthquakes.  Japan's experience of  an earthquake-damaged nuclear reactor last year created a spike in the price of Liquefied Natural Gas for some time in the Pacific Basin market.