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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

#161

Post by mrob »

Kipters wrote: post #119
Arodex wrote: 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…

Why not both? We still need rotating mass to keep the grid stable, which means either building giant flywheels, keep burning gas or bring nuclear into the mix. One of these can also produce a ton of energy when needed, the other two cant. We can and should build more renewables, but we can't risk grid stability!

It's technically possible to replace rotating mass with batteries using a "grid-forming inverter", which is an inverter that converts the battery DC to AC with frequency varying depending on the grid load, simulating how that rotating mass would behave ("synthetic inertia"):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverter-based_resource#Grid-f...

This competes with the traditional giant flywheel option ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser ), which has the advantage of being a simple and proven technology, and handling brief overload better, but the disadvantage of having moving parts. It's not clear which option is currently best. Both are in current use.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#162

Post by ttoinou »

Arodex wrote: post #104
eightysixfour wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy security is something I expect the government to invest my tax dollars in especially energy generation that is resilient to international politics and reduced carbon emissions.

Then nuclear isn't it. Switzerland has no uranium and no strong relationship with an uranium-producing country. They also regularly antagonise the EU (especially the far-right isolationisz SVP/UDC, which is... pro-nuclear, of course) which controls every way fission products could be brought inside Switzerland. The same far-right country is also the one who wanted to cap the population because "there isn't room anymo…

You can make decades stocks of the fissile source

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#163

Post by Manuel_D »

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 Navy uses highly enriched uranium for its reactors, something like 70-80% enrichment. This is a non starter for civilian use, on account of proliferation concerns. That, and the enrichment requirements drive up fuel costs.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#164

Post by rayiner »

esarbe wrote: post #152
bilekas wrote: post #146

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...

It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death. They’re the third biggest villains of climate change, after consumers and oil companies.

If the whole developed world had nuclearized the way France did, our discussions about climate change would be entirely different. We would have decades more runway to avoid 2C+ scenarios. We would have already electrified vast swaths of the economy, like home heating. We’d have extremely mature technology to give to developing countries that need massive baseload for industrial production. Today, we’d be discussing how many older nukes we could retire and replace with wind and solar plants.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#165

Post by esarbe »

cloudie78 wrote: post #125
Kon5ole wrote: post #76

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.

You should take note that you’re uninformed or intentionally spreading false information and misrepresenting reality. Fact of the matter is it takes a large upfront investment to build a nuclear reactor and it has a longer time horizon before it becomes profitable in comparison to something like a gas or coal power plant. It comes down to whether or not the country, government, citizens and country have the ability t…

There's no false information there. Nuclear is complex and so expensive that despite 70 years of tinkering and trying it hasn't managed to make a noticeable dent in fossil fuel. It's also slow, with building times up to more than a decade.

France tried it. Now their nuclear operator is €50 billion in the negatives, makes about €3 billion per year in profits and has to invest about €150 billion in new reactors, upgrades, refits and infrastructure.

Nuclear is just not worth the hassle.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#166

Post by lopis »

Gud wrote: post #150
bilekas wrote: post #146

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.

Switzerland is not in the EU.

While it's not part of the EU as a member, Switzerland is quite literally in the EU.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#168

Post by rayiner »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #96
anon7725 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a cleaner, more consistent technology for baseload? At a certain point, dollars are funny money if you are destroying the environment to save a few now by generating baseload with a carbon-producing tech. Of course, let’s build the safest and most efficient nuclear that we can, but “its capex is too high” is not a compelling argument to me. And to be clear: renewables should form as much of the capacity as p…

"Baseload" is load , not generation. It's not necessary -- for example the small northern grids that only have diesel generators operate fine even though they have no generators that don't have the capacity for quick cycling. Baseload was a cost optimization. Back in the day it was cheaper to build coal & nuclear plants that took days to power on. Somebody figured out that if a grid was built of a mix of those cheape…

> Their new coal plants do not run 24/7, they only run at night

That’s baseload! Baseload is load you can’t turn off: the minimum load that’s required in a 24 hour period. It can be fulfilled with non-dispatchable sources, but it need not be. In this case, China is building coal plants to address the baseload that doesn’t go away at night when the solar isn’t producing.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#169

Post by tokioyoyo »

Gud wrote: post #160
esarbe wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Every time this argument comes up, “it’s too slow and expensive “, I ask that person to please explain to me how my home country Sweden managed to build all those reactors in the 70s and 80s both fast and cheap? They’ve been amazing for us, despite the fact that some of them was recklessly shutdown prematurely by an ignorant political class.

Process works if you keep building, expanding and making it safer. If you don’t build it for decades, you’re basically starting from scratch.

It is a hard sell when you have to front a good chunk of money, without a track record of successful build ups. It applies to other infrastructure stuff like HSR.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#170

Post by bilekas »

Gud wrote: post #150
bilekas wrote: post #146

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.

Switzerland is not in the EU.

It's not and that's fine, but it's very much part of the European economic area, and we have a great relationship as well as a lot of alignments with standards and so on. The EU wouldn't have no issues taking notes from the Swiss.
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