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What is the actual claim here? Nuclear power didn't prevent any deaths, after all everyone will eventually die for one reason or another. So it must be somethin

What is the actual claim here? Nuclear power didn't prevent any deaths, after all everyone will eventually die for one reason or another. So it must be something like two million people would have died earlier without nuclear power, but by how much? Does it mean nuclear power saved the equivalent of two million average lifespans? Or would two million people more have died in coal mines?

mytailorisrich 5y ago
Obviously when something is said to have "prevented deaths" this means early deaths from accidents/illness... Here, as is explained is the tweet, the claim is based on the reduction in air pollution.
- danbruc 5y ago
  Without further details that is not really helpful. If everyone died one week earlier because of additional air pollution, would that mean nuclear power saved everyone's life? And it certainly makes a difference whether the average loss of lifetime is a week or ten years.
- arlort 5y ago
  A more interesting metric would maybe be years of life expectancy, but that's probably too much of a hassle to calculate for a metric which is relatively speaking useless
- pvaldes 5y ago
  > the claim is based on the reduction in air pollution. That has been heavily improved in the last years by a better car design, better materials, motor burning regulated by electronics and a much more strict regulation in vehicle emissions. Thus nuclear would be bragging here about other's merits. Using the same argument we could claim also that combustible fossils had saved millions of lives in the last years because cars now have much more plastic parts than before (reduced weight -> less mass to move -> less fuel spent to move it -> less air pollution).
rob74 5y ago
Well, he claims that these lives "would have been lost due to air pollution". The question is, what was the alternative considered for this study? Probably the worst kind of coal plant they could imagine, without any kind of filtration technology? Because I'm pretty sure that the number of lives lost in the last 50 years due to pollution from coal power plants in, let's say, Germany (Ok, West Germany before 1990) is pretty close to zero. Ok, there are of course other countries with less strict regulations, but then the question is this: would a country that is not capable to regulate its coal plant operators so that they don't kill people via pollution be capable to regulate its nuclear plant operators so that they operate their plants safely?
- danbruc 5y ago
  The problem is that »[...] lives that would have been lost due to air pollution.« makes no sense. The closest meaningful literal interpretation would be, that the additional air pollution would have effect no one except two million people and those would have died earlier than without the additional air pollution. But that still doesn't tell much unless you specify how much earlier they would have died. In reality additional air pollution, on average, shortens everyone's life expectancy by a certain amount and that is a meaningful measure. So maybe the claim is supposed to mean that nuclear power saved about two million times the average life expectancy during the last 50 years which is very roughly one week for everyone. But it is not even clear if the number is supposed to be a global number or for a more specific area.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"after all everyone will eventually die for one reason or another." Well then we should let killers out of prison.
- danbruc 5y ago
  That's the point, whether the killers are in prison or free, everyone will die. But with the killers in freedom, people will have a decreased life expectancy and that decrease - simply on average or also taking into account the distribution - is a meaningful way to measure the impact. But that analogy is not really good, in case of the killers you can pretty much quantify how many people died because of them and therefore you could say not releasing the killers saved two million lives. [1] In case of some additional air pollution you are not able to say who died because of it, you can only observe a change in life expectancy. [1] But even that is only meaningful to a certain extend - if all the killers decided to only kill people seconds before they died from another reason, that two million lives saved really means two million times ten seconds saved.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

Obviously when something is said to have "prevented deaths" this means early deaths from accidents/illness... Here, as is explained is the tweet, the claim is based on the reduction in air pollution.

danbruc 5y ago
Without further details that is not really helpful. If everyone died one week earlier because of additional air pollution, would that mean nuclear power saved everyone's life? And it certainly makes a difference whether the average loss of lifetime is a week or ten years.
arlort 5y ago
A more interesting metric would maybe be years of life expectancy, but that's probably too much of a hassle to calculate for a metric which is relatively speaking useless
pvaldes 5y ago
> the claim is based on the reduction in air pollution. That has been heavily improved in the last years by a better car design, better materials, motor burning regulated by electronics and a much more strict regulation in vehicle emissions. Thus nuclear would be bragging here about other's merits. Using the same argument we could claim also that combustible fossils had saved millions of lives in the last years because cars now have much more plastic parts than before (reduced weight -> less mass to move -> less fuel spent to move it -> less air pollution).

rob74 5y ago

Well, he claims that these lives "would have been lost due to air pollution". The question is, what was the alternative considered for this study? Probably the worst kind of coal plant they could imagine, without any kind of filtration technology? Because I'm pretty sure that the number of lives lost in the last 50 years due to pollution from coal power plants in, let's say, Germany (Ok, West Germany before 1990) is pretty close to zero. Ok, there are of course other countries with less strict regulations, but then the question is this: would a country that is not capable to regulate its coal plant operators so that they don't kill people via pollution be capable to regulate its nuclear plant operators so that they operate their plants safely?

danbruc 5y ago
The problem is that »[...] lives that would have been lost due to air pollution.« makes no sense. The closest meaningful literal interpretation would be, that the additional air pollution would have effect no one except two million people and those would have died earlier than without the additional air pollution. But that still doesn't tell much unless you specify how much earlier they would have died. In reality additional air pollution, on average, shortens everyone's life expectancy by a certain amount and that is a meaningful measure. So maybe the claim is supposed to mean that nuclear power saved about two million times the average life expectancy during the last 50 years which is very roughly one week for everyone. But it is not even clear if the number is supposed to be a global number or for a more specific area.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"after all everyone will eventually die for one reason or another." Well then we should let killers out of prison.

danbruc 5y ago
That's the point, whether the killers are in prison or free, everyone will die. But with the killers in freedom, people will have a decreased life expectancy and that decrease - simply on average or also taking into account the distribution - is a meaningful way to measure the impact. But that analogy is not really good, in case of the killers you can pretty much quantify how many people died because of them and therefore you could say not releasing the killers saved two million lives. [1] In case of some additional air pollution you are not able to say who died because of it, you can only observe a change in life expectancy. [1] But even that is only meaningful to a certain extend - if all the killers decided to only kill people seconds before they died from another reason, that two million lives saved really means two million times ten seconds saved.