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Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

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Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#61

Post by ziotom78 »

Arodex wrote: post #22
reddalo wrote: post #5

I wish Italy did the same. We still have to deal with the consequences of a referendum hold not so long after che Chernobyl accident which made it illegal to build and operate nuclear power plants.

It is absolutely ridiculous: of all countries, Italy has totally the means to rely only on solar and batteries. You even have the industrial prowess to make it all in the country step by step, whereas nuclear reactors are such humongous engineering projects that building the capacity is very out of reach. Edit: and with the Mediterranean and rivers warming severely - and the latter even suffering from draught - how a…

> It is absolutely ridiculous: of all countries, Italy has totally the means to rely only on solar and batteries

Do you have any trustable source for this?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#62

Post by mpweiher »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #16
abecedarius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I expect they're too expensive" is a terrible reason to ban them, though.

That's not why they were banned, and in any case lifting a ban on building something that nobody will build doesn't seem like good use of legislators time.

At least one Kanton has already requested a new build.

https://www.nuklearforum.ch/de/news/neues-kernkraftwerk-im-a...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#63

Post by Arodex »

RealityVoid wrote: post #47
Arodex wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How are SMR's "gaslighting themodynamics"? I mean, sure, I can accept that they're not economical with current tech, but it's not a frigging' perpetuum mobile, it's feasible technology.

Thermodynamics are the reason why SMR aren't, and will never, be economical. A bigger nuclear reactor will always undercut your price per watt.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#64

Post by IsTom »

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.

It raises cost, makes access difficult in case a recoverable accident happens and there's still possibility of groundwater contamination if things go wrong.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#65

Post by sisve »

iso1631 wrote: post #17
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.

With little land usable for solar and wind I was thinking that Switzerland and Austria would need it more Edit: Not Norway - Doh!

Norwegian here.

- We have a lot of hydro, that are very cheap to produces and for some of the power plants we fill up water by using solar and wind when that is very cheap and generate power back when it's demand for it (meaning selling it expensive)

-Norway export more then we are importing. But that could shift in the coming years.

-Nuclear power are expensive, so with the current prices it do not make sense to have nuclear in Norway. Thought that could change (see point 2)

- not sure what you mean by "little land usable", you can absolutely be correct. in terms of size we are bigger then Germany. But I'm not sure how much usable land there is vs other countries. We do not have that big population but it's spread out and no one wants a wind park in their neighborhood

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#66

Post by includenotfound »

orwin wrote: post #51
_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…

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.

I don't doubt the Swiss could do it right technically speaking, as they do everything else, but I guess the economic argument still holds.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#67

Post by jokteur »

alephnerd wrote: post #53
jokteur wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

We have national media (German: srf, French/Italian: rts, Romanche: rtr), people consume that, and a few medias that have multiple language versions like 20minutes.

We also have a few language specific medias (German: NZZ, Tagesanzeiger, Blick, ..., French: Le Temps, 24 heures, La Liberté, ...), but I think most people consume Swiss media, especially when Swiss politics and local afairs are absolutely not covered by French and German medias.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#68

Post by cogman10 »

julkali wrote: post #57
cogman10 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, that seems like it'd be something that would also stop nuclear deployment.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#70

Post by jsnell »

cogman10 wrote: post #52
tribaal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not an EU nation.
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