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Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

bluewin.ch

71–80 of 1001 posts

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can always sell the electricity

It's far too expensive for that with how cheap renewables are making electricity. France is already struggling with that.

That turns out not to be the case.

France is not "struggling", they are once again the #1 electricity exporter in Europe, with low-electricity prices, reliable supply, huge profits, and world-beating CO₂ emissions.

Their newest energy roadmap has drastically reduced renewables build-out, while at the same including first 6 and then 8 new EPR2 reactors.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#72
post #11
post #2

Best way to provide power to a population over 10 million

I wonder if they’ll stagger their waking hours so that electric power consumption matches the inflexible output of nuclear reactors.

If only there were a supplemental daylight-based power source that precisely matched peak output to waking hours.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#73
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh wow, I didn't realize that! That's crazy, basically everyone that borders them are EU members. I was also under the impression (but haven't checked) that it was pretty easy to cross the swiss border both into and out of the EU.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#74
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.

> SMR make as much sense as space datacenters. you are in this thread a lot, so i am guessing you must be very familiar with the industry. maybe you can help me understand: is the wikipedia on SMRs incorrect/lying when they say that there are commercially operating SMRs since 2020? and how have so many smart people and companies been duped into seriously considering SMR technology if SMRs apparently break the laws of…

>commercially operating

And struggling, propped up by taylor-made laws and public money.

>how have so many smart people and companies been duped into seriously considering SMR technology if SMRs apparently break the laws of thermodynamics?

Never said they break the laws of thermodynamics. They are just inefficient and will never be more efficient than alternatives such as... Bigger nuclear reactors.

Or solar.

And how long have you been out there? Have you never seen investors dumping and wasting billions in dead-ends? Never seen a mania before?

Nuclear attracts clever people, but it isn't smart nor wise.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#75
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.

See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587327

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#77
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.

> I wish Italy did the same.

They are in the process. Last I checked the bill to do so had passed the lower house and how needs to get ratified by the senate.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/italian-bill-on-...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#78
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)

[dead]

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#79
post #6

This is going to be a huge waste of time and money until we realize that building new nuclear power plants will be too expensive and too late, since we'll have figured out a renewable energy concept that'll handle the load by then. Instead we could also just join a French project, who have way more experience. We should focus on extending our hydro power storage capacity instead. There will be a referendum anyways, s…

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

It is when it's tied to "and I expect they're going to ask for giant subsidies from taxpayers".

Which nuclear inevitably does, both in the form of direct requests for money and by refusing to pay for adequate insurance to compensate everyone who will be damaged in the event of a meltdown externalizing the risks.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#80
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Latitude?
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