151–160 of 1001 posts
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.
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.
At this point nuclear is just a dead horse. It hasn't managed to displace fossil fuels in over 70 years - a feat that renewables have done within 20 years. Nuclear is too slow and too expensive.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/france...
Citizens should take note that no nuclear plants are ever built without many billions in state loans and guarantees. It's not a cheap source of electricity, it's a way for someone to get money from taxpayers to subsidize their business.
Note that it’s similar with eoliens wind turbines, they are heavily subsidized
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The fact that we haven't seen more widespread use of SMRs suggests that you're right. But it's important to point out that there are cost saving opportunities that could potentially reduce the net price per watt despite worse thermodynamic efficiency.
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/
New nuclear power plants would be much more expensive at $180 / MWh or more, due to strict modern regulations. Even with these regulations, there is no nuclear plant that is safe against a terrorist crashing an airplane into it.
The unsolved permanent repository problem is left to future generations.
Finally, building a new nuclear power plant will easily take a decade or more.
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…
Why do you need both? It's possible to get 99.99% reliability with wind & solar & batteries & weather modelling. There are multiple ways to handle a week long dankelflaute without nuclear: overbuilding, continental scale distribution, lots of batteries, etc. All are cheaper than nuclear.
It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability out of any grid, even a nuclear dominated one. Local distribution has many single points of failure.
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…
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
Nuclear has had its moment. That moment is gone.
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/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's also incredibly expensive and brittle and cannot be moderated without additional costs[1]. At this point nuclear is just a dead horse. It hasn't managed to displace fossil fuels in over 70 years - a feat that renewables have done within 20 years. Nuclear is too slow and too expensive. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/france...
They’ve been amazing for us, despite the fact that some of them was recklessly shutdown prematurely by an ignorant political class.