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Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

bluewin.ch

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Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#51

Post by orwin »

_diyar wrote: post #25
orwin wrote: post #8

Switzerland, Norway and Austria are probably the country that needs nuclear the less, but anything to start the discussion in other European countries is good. Probably not economically viable in Switzerland though.

Hard disagree. As a. swiss voter, this is close to my heart. 50% of all energy in the swiss economy is oil / gas. Of the remaining 50% (electricity), 2/3 are generated by hydro. The remaining ~1/3 by nuclear fission. Swiss electricity prices are sky-high, and the demand for electricity is going to continue to rise. To remain a competitive industrial economy, to transition away from oil/gas, and to offset any potentia…

Like I said in another comment: nuclear only makes sense if you build it at scale, because you need very specific skills and knowledge that is hard to get to build it securely, on time and cheap. Ideally you would have one company/conglomerate that would get one plant off the ground per year across the EU, but currently that isn't possible.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#52

Post by cogman10 »

tribaal wrote: post #44
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...You guys have mountains everywhere, which means dirt cheap hydro energy storage for solar and wind? I'm a lftr enthusiast, but everyone needs to keep in mind that fission is just fundamentally economically non-competitive compared to solar and wind. And all those stories about fusion being right around the corner? Yeah, that won't be economically competitive either. I personally am not in favor of closing down exi…

Mostly all of our potential for pumped hydro is already developed, and there is not a lot left to do for non-pumped hydro. We can't grow hydro at the required scale, and the usual problem with solar and wind (that we should develop nonetheless, don't get me wrong) apply: we can't produce enough power with those all year (winter nights need power too for heat pumps etc...)

Wind would be particularly effective in Switzerland and it's fast to deploy. The swiss grid has less than 1% wind which was pretty shocking to me. It seems like Switzerland has a particularly bad renewable story for an EU nation.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#53

Post by alephnerd »

jokteur wrote: post #46
alephnerd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland Does discourse from neighboring countries leak in as well? For example, German and Italian media's anti-nuclear sentiment versus French media's neutral to vaguely positive sentiment about nuclear.

French part of Switzerland is much more left leaning, so I can expect more anti-nuclear sentiment on this side. But the sentiment of nuclear depends purely on which party you vote for, I don't think the language itself has an impact. But, Germany's decision after Fukushima to close down all nuclear reactors has had a strong impact on the 2017 votation that banned nuclear in Switzerland. So I guess the influence is th…

So French Swiss or German Swiss aren't going to be consuming French or German news media? If so that's refreshing compared to Canadians and Brits who constantly try to butt into American media and culture wars (eg. Rebel News, UnHerd) and vice versa (eg. X)

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#54

Post by pjc50 »

_diyar wrote: post #25
orwin wrote: post #8

Switzerland, Norway and Austria are probably the country that needs nuclear the less, but anything to start the discussion in other European countries is good. Probably not economically viable in Switzerland though.

Hard disagree. As a. swiss voter, this is close to my heart. 50% of all energy in the swiss economy is oil / gas. Of the remaining 50% (electricity), 2/3 are generated by hydro. The remaining ~1/3 by nuclear fission. Swiss electricity prices are sky-high, and the demand for electricity is going to continue to rise. To remain a competitive industrial economy, to transition away from oil/gas, and to offset any potentia…

Where's the solar currently? Is it also victim to NIMBYs? Or shading?

I can understand people objecting to plastering the south facing unshaded Alps with panels, but .. it would certainly generate a lot.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#55

Post by jokteur »

christkv wrote: post #49
jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

You could build the reactors inside the mountains to improve the security and effects of things like meltdowns.

Funny thing you mention that.

We had a nuclear meltdown in an experimental reactor in Lucens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucens_reactor).

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#56

Post by Arodex »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #24
Arodex wrote: post #15

Like the F-35 fighter jet, this is just another victory for lobbyists in the industry who will be able to siphon public money into over-budget, deadline busting white whale projects that will never recoup its costs. Especially nuclear. It is now economically non-viable.

What lobbyists? Concrete powder companies? Other governmental companies? Keep in mind similar things have been said about solar and wind previously.

Civil engineering, power equipment (ABB is a big firm in Switzerland), Energy companies (the market is Switzerland is a constellation of local monopolies, who have already announced they won't invest their own huge money reserves in nuclear, it will have to be all public money and garanties), etc.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#57

Post by julkali »

cogman10 wrote: post #48
_diyar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. As a. swiss voter, this is close to my heart. 50% of all energy in the swiss economy is oil / gas. Of the remaining 50% (electricity), 2/3 are generated by hydro. The remaining ~1/3 by nuclear fission. Swiss electricity prices are sky-high, and the demand for electricity is going to continue to rise. To remain a competitive industrial economy, to transition away from oil/gas, and to offset any potentia…

Why hasn't Switzerland deployed solar/wind? That seems like a pretty big miss in general. The Swiss grid has almost no wind which is strange for such a mountainous nation. And solar is also quite low which is also strange given how much empty land exists in Switzerland along with it's relatively low latitude.

nimby

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#58

Post by bakies »

Arodex wrote: post #39
GL26 wrote: post #19

Nuclear energy is really the energy of the future, fission still has bright days ahead of it. the startup market for SMRs is going to boom once the core challenges will have been solved, sure that we will see many ETH founders go into that world

Every SMR startup is failing. The more they progress, the more they revise their costs upwards. SMR make as much sense as space datacenters. You can gaslight investors, you can gaslight HN, you can gaslight a national parliament full of lobbyists, but you can't gaslight thermodynamics.

What are the challenges they face?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#59

Post by mpweiher »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #14

It's a world-wide competition to generate the most expensive electricity! The record is currently held by Vogtle in Georgia US, but Ontario Canada is trying to take the crown by spending $500B on nuclear.

That competition is handily won by wind and solar.

In the meantime in Switzerland:

"Our cheapest electricity product is nuclear electricity."

https://ewr.ch/elektrizitaet/stromprodukte/

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#60

Post by firefax »

One of the little gems the Russians pulled off in the twenty aughts when they were flooding nonprofits in the USA with dirty money was hijacking the green movement to promote fracking. (Because surely ANYTHING is better than those dastardly electrons or whatever the fuck radiation is made of)

Switzerland, unlike the USA, seems capable of safely operating these plants, and with advances in breeder technology new plants doesn't nessecarily mean new mining operations, which often are quite harsh on the surrounding area.

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