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This is a strange shift in responsibility. Wouldn’t it be better to say: “Coal shortened the life of so and so many people”? After all If there were neither coa

This is a strange shift in responsibility. Wouldn’t it be better to say: “Coal shortened the life of so and so many people”? After all If there were neither coal power (or other air polluting power) nor nuclear those lives wouldn’t have been shortened either.

ncmncm 5y ago
Yes. This is an attempt to boost nukes, but however much better it makes nukes look, it makes renewables several times moreso.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  If it is retrospective, it doesn't really say anything about renewables because for most of the last 50 years they haven't been [meaningfully] feasible. The debate going forward is still entirely valid because nuclear has upsides that contrast with renewable. It should be part of the discussion.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    It is still a rather strange shift in perspective. We don’t count the people saved by taking public transit, we count the people killed by cars. Speculating what was and wasn’t feasible for the past 50 years is even stranger. Usually these comparisons have an implicit all else being equal because you can get into some real funky speculations with alternative history without it. For example, if we had neither coal nor nuclear how different would the energy market be today? Would there have been more innovations in renewables and the current technology would have been reached in the 80s? Or would we have implemented our infrastructure to maximize energy efficiency? How many lives would that have saved? You get the point. This practice gets unnecessarily complicated really fast. I agree with parent that the only reason to say that “nuclear saves lives“ over “coal destroys lives” is that you have an agenda to promote nuclear over alternatives without mentioning those alternatives.
    - belorn 5y ago
      City planners do make estimates on how much traffic is reduced by introducing more and new public transit. They also make estimates on reduced traffic accidents when building news roads and redirect traffic away from more dangerous paths and those close to high risk areas like schools. We can also compare similar sized locations and compare outcomes. How many lives dies to traffic accidents in cities prioritizing bike lanes and mass transit compared to same sized cities that prioritize car travel? We can also count how many people that die to air pollution related illness in countries with a lot of coal power and compare that to cities with a lot of nuclear power. We can also look at countries like Island or Norway, through countries that can exclusively depend on hydro/geothermal power has a fairly low sample size. With coal we can get a fairly massive sample size just looking at the scope of a city.
      - runarberg 5y ago
        Indeed. The logic goes: Vehicular traffic kills so-and-so many people. We can significantly lower that number by reducing vehicular miles traveled. Options include better bike infrastructure, better public transit, mixed zoning, lower speed limits, etc. If a city engineer would invert the logic and start with “Bicycle lanes have saved so-and-so many lives”. That would be rather odd wouldn’t it?
        belorn 5y ago
        If I search for "Bicycle lanes lives saved" (and alternative version of the search string) I find plenty of articles and even studies with those words in the title. Here is one: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2022/03/09/bicycle-infrastructure-saves-lives-in-more-ways-than-one/?sh=4fb615817942 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2022/03/09/bicycle-... In the United States, just under 1 percent of commuters travel by bicycle, Patz said. Increasing that slice to 6 percent—the level in Madison, WI—would avoid 20,000 premature deaths per year, he said > That would be rather odd wouldn’t it? Maybe I read too much news but No, I don't find it odd. Building safer roads, reducing traffic, improving traffic safety, does save lives. Reducing air pollution saves lives too.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  It's not about "boosting nukes" it's about countering nuclear energy FUD (mostly about how dangerous nuclear energy is). Renewables would probably be comparable, but I'm very skeptical about your "several times better" claim. Nuclear energy and renewable energy are both very low carbon sources with very few non-pollution-derived deaths (rooftop solar exceeds nuclear energy for deaths, even including nuclear anomalies like Chernobyl IIRC). So there's no way that the carbon gap between fossil fuels and nuclear is significantly larger (much less 3x larger) than the gap between fossil fuels and renewables.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    What stops nuke construction today is that it costs a hell of a lot more, and you don't get any kWh out for years, if ever. Most usually, lately, you pour in $billions for years and get nothing out but a lot of scrap concrete.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      I don't know that it costs "a hell of a lot more" for a unit of reliable energy, but yeah, you can deploy renewable energy in smaller units more quickly (it might take you a decade to build out a GW of nuclear capacity or a GW of solar capacity, but at least in the case of solar you don't need the full GW to complete before you can start selling power). However, to be clear, this is the economic argument, not the health argument that the OP was debating.

ncmncm 5y ago

Yes. This is an attempt to boost nukes, but however much better it makes nukes look, it makes renewables several times moreso.

rootusrootus 5y ago
If it is retrospective, it doesn't really say anything about renewables because for most of the last 50 years they haven't been [meaningfully] feasible. The debate going forward is still entirely valid because nuclear has upsides that contrast with renewable. It should be part of the discussion.
- runarberg 5y ago
  It is still a rather strange shift in perspective. We don’t count the people saved by taking public transit, we count the people killed by cars. Speculating what was and wasn’t feasible for the past 50 years is even stranger. Usually these comparisons have an implicit all else being equal because you can get into some real funky speculations with alternative history without it. For example, if we had neither coal nor nuclear how different would the energy market be today? Would there have been more innovations in renewables and the current technology would have been reached in the 80s? Or would we have implemented our infrastructure to maximize energy efficiency? How many lives would that have saved? You get the point. This practice gets unnecessarily complicated really fast. I agree with parent that the only reason to say that “nuclear saves lives“ over “coal destroys lives” is that you have an agenda to promote nuclear over alternatives without mentioning those alternatives.
  - belorn 5y ago
    City planners do make estimates on how much traffic is reduced by introducing more and new public transit. They also make estimates on reduced traffic accidents when building news roads and redirect traffic away from more dangerous paths and those close to high risk areas like schools. We can also compare similar sized locations and compare outcomes. How many lives dies to traffic accidents in cities prioritizing bike lanes and mass transit compared to same sized cities that prioritize car travel? We can also count how many people that die to air pollution related illness in countries with a lot of coal power and compare that to cities with a lot of nuclear power. We can also look at countries like Island or Norway, through countries that can exclusively depend on hydro/geothermal power has a fairly low sample size. With coal we can get a fairly massive sample size just looking at the scope of a city.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      Indeed. The logic goes: Vehicular traffic kills so-and-so many people. We can significantly lower that number by reducing vehicular miles traveled. Options include better bike infrastructure, better public transit, mixed zoning, lower speed limits, etc. If a city engineer would invert the logic and start with “Bicycle lanes have saved so-and-so many lives”. That would be rather odd wouldn’t it?
      - belorn 5y ago
        If I search for "Bicycle lanes lives saved" (and alternative version of the search string) I find plenty of articles and even studies with those words in the title. Here is one: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2022/03/09/bicycle-infrastructure-saves-lives-in-more-ways-than-one/?sh=4fb615817942 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2022/03/09/bicycle-... In the United States, just under 1 percent of commuters travel by bicycle, Patz said. Increasing that slice to 6 percent—the level in Madison, WI—would avoid 20,000 premature deaths per year, he said > That would be rather odd wouldn’t it? Maybe I read too much news but No, I don't find it odd. Building safer roads, reducing traffic, improving traffic safety, does save lives. Reducing air pollution saves lives too.
throwaway894345 5y ago
It's not about "boosting nukes" it's about countering nuclear energy FUD (mostly about how dangerous nuclear energy is). Renewables would probably be comparable, but I'm very skeptical about your "several times better" claim. Nuclear energy and renewable energy are both very low carbon sources with very few non-pollution-derived deaths (rooftop solar exceeds nuclear energy for deaths, even including nuclear anomalies like Chernobyl IIRC). So there's no way that the carbon gap between fossil fuels and nuclear is significantly larger (much less 3x larger) than the gap between fossil fuels and renewables.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  What stops nuke construction today is that it costs a hell of a lot more, and you don't get any kWh out for years, if ever. Most usually, lately, you pour in $billions for years and get nothing out but a lot of scrap concrete.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I don't know that it costs "a hell of a lot more" for a unit of reliable energy, but yeah, you can deploy renewable energy in smaller units more quickly (it might take you a decade to build out a GW of nuclear capacity or a GW of solar capacity, but at least in the case of solar you don't need the full GW to complete before you can start selling power). However, to be clear, this is the economic argument, not the health argument that the OP was debating.