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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

#141

Post by bryanlarsen »

john_strinlai wrote: post #124
Arodex wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i feel like available space, time to complete construction All of these favor again bigger reactors. >considering the length of time and sheer number of people, companies, and governments considering/investing in SMR tech it seems unlikely to be a mania. All of the Swiss energy companies are asking to be bailed out in advance of the investment in nuclear.

> All of these favor again bigger reactors. how does having less available space favor a bigger reactor? and how is constructing a bigger reactor faster than constructing a smaller one?

There are two ways of achieving economies of scale: making things bigger or making more of them.

For small quantities, the former is usually more effective -- making things bigger lets you make fewer of them, reducing costs.

For large quantities, a factory can enable insane economies of scale.

SMR proponents are talking about building dozens of reactors. That fits very firmly in the "small quantity" column where economies of scale almost always favor building things bigger.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#142

Post by folkrav »

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…

> the sentiment of nuclear depends purely on which party you vote for

Unless you personally agree with whatever your preferred party's line is on everything and generalize that sentiment, I'm not sure how to get to that conclusion.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#143

Post by Arodex »

chickenbig wrote: post #126
Arodex wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Thermodynamics are the reason why SMR aren't, and will never, be economical. And the link between thermodynamics and the price of electricity is what?

Your small nuclear reactor is going to need almost as much engineering , plumbing, safety mechanism, personnel, maintenance, etc... as your big nuclear reactor.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#144

Post by Arodex »

lightedman wrote: post #115
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.

"SMR make as much sense as space datacenters." So a whole lot of sense given the entire US Navy uses them and I already have one datacenter operating up in space (small test unit that over 3 months has provided ZERO issues) and a bigger one heading up into orbit next year when it's done being made. "but you can't gaslight thermodynamics" No but you can certainly conflate them like you're doing right now.

>the entire US Navy uses them

Is the business of the US Navy to sell electrity on the market?

You are the one conflating things that have absolutely no connections.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#145

Post by seviu »

folkrav wrote: post #142
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…

> the sentiment of nuclear depends purely on which party you vote for Unless you personally agree with whatever your preferred party's line is on everything and generalize that sentiment, I'm not sure how to get to that conclusion.

I am member of the SP in Switzerland and I am pro nuclear.

I don’t know why we put people in political buckets. It’s good to disagree. I am probably the weird guy but so be it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#146

Post by bilekas »

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…

Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though. The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days. It a real shame to leave it all on the table because of poorly designed and managed disasters.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#147

Post by iso1631 »

iso1631 wrote: post #21
whycome wrote: post #2

Best way to provide power to a population over 10 million

Best way for who? Nuclear is vastly more expensive per MWh than renewables. It's better than pumping stuff out the ground sure, but that's about it.

And as usual the nuclear brainwashed lobby on HN still think it's 1990 and nuclear is cost effective.

It can't cope with peaks. It has to generate the same power 24/7 to be anywhere near economical at two-three times the cost of solar+storage, so it either needs massive storage or massive overprovision

Lets say you have a peak demand of say 40GW but average demand of 600GWh a day (25GW), or 219TWh a year

Lets also say you have to shut down a plant for a week a year for maintenence

You need to build five, 10GW plants to meet your demand.

They provide 5 * 10GW * 24 hours * 7 days * 51 weeks or 428TWh.

If nuclear is $110 per MWh, that means it's going to cost you $47b a year to generate your power requirement, or $215 per MWh

So you're needing to roll out storage, same as you do for wind and solar, or spend twice as much on overproducing.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#148

Post by Tepix »

well_ackshually wrote: post #138
tcfhgj wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we don't need reliable "base load" but peakers - with more renewables more than ever. Baseload won't be price competitive with renewables in average or shiny/windy conditions ever

you'll be so happy about being price competitive when the conditions are bad for like a week and the country just doesn't run (or rely on other countries price gouging you for what your country needs to exist.) Opposing nuclear & renewables is stupid. You need both. You need as many power sources as you can, as quick as you can while the resources are available. Energy is not something you leave up to the invisible h…

No. Nuclear is neither price competitive, nor is it available quick enough.

Go fully renewable. Add batteries, like Google is doing. Just one example: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/24/google-to-deploy-worl...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#149

Post by Manuel_D »

bakies wrote: post #58
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.

What are the challenges they face?

One is regulatory. At least in the US, every nuclear reactor that produces at least 100 MW needs to carry a 375 million dollar insurance policy at minimum. Under 100 MW there is an alternate schedule that ranges from 5 million to 75 million scaling based on output. But the net result is that it's still more profitable to built a single large reactor, since a 1 GW reactor is less to insure than 10 100 MW reactors. This is written into law, it would require Congress to change it.

Second is that nuclear reactor efficiency tends to improve with size. The ratio of thermal watts to electric watts tends to be better with large reactors. I'm not super well versed on the engineering tradeoffs here by my rough understanding is that waste heat scales with surface area while useful energy extraction scales with volume.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#150

Post by Gud »

bilekas wrote: post #146
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…

Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though. The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days. It a real shame to leave it all on the table because of poorly designed and managed disasters.

Switzerland is not in the EU.
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