Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#181

Post by Gud » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

tokioyoyo wrote: post #169

Gud wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So let’s learn from that lesson and rebuild nuclear power in Europe?

Let’s hope Switzerland takes the lead here, Sweden are already building.

The political will is there. Let’s do it?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#182

Post by pydry » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #164

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...

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 econom…

>environmentalists have choked it to death.

Those regulations you despise were written in blood.

Moreover, Nuclear power enjoys free catastrophe insurance. If a Fukushima style meltdown happens, the taxpayer is always on the hook for 95%+ of the cleanup costs.

So yeah, all you have to do is let them keep their freebie insurance, lavish them with subsidies and water down the regulations which make it vastly more likely that they'll need to use it.

Or just build some solar, some wind and some storage, save a mountain of cash and have new generation projects take under five years to finish instead of more than 20.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#183

Post by adjejmxbdjdn » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #164

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...

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 econom…

Ah yes, environmentalists have been running the world for the last few decades.

Nuclear has never been financially viable and to the degree there has been “environmental” opposition it’s been NIMBY opposition to either the siting of the reactors or the siting of the disposal.

But again, the primary reason no one is building nuclear is because it’s incredibly expensive.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#184

Post by t1234s » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

Switzerland seems like a country where they wouldn't have trouble hiring enough very responsible serious people capable of running nuclear plants. Aside from being able to acquire fuel is there any reason they are not near 100% nuclear?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#185

Post by mytailorisrich » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

Arodex wrote: post #98

jokteur wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The funny thing is that people know more about what is happening in the neighbouring countries than in the other parts of Switzerland. The "national" media is very divided and only covers French-speaking regions in French, German-speaking in German, etc. as if they were local media.

Switzerland is like that. I remember asking (in my best German) the person manning a ticket counter at Zurich train station if they spoke French once, if a look could kill I'd be dead, lol.

It gives the strange feeling that although they decided to create a country together they don't want to interact with each others unless absolutely necessary.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#186

Post by esarbe » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #164

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...

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 econom…

Ah, yes - "the evil environmentalists." Congratulations, you really torched that straw man.

We stopped building nuclear reactors in the early 1970ies[0], long before there was any large organized civil movement organizing against it - because with the required additional complexity to make them safe, the technology was just too expensive.

(As always - it's the capitalists that messed things up, not civil society.)

Despite having 70 years of progress, nuclear today is more expensive than ever. It just doesn't scale.

France's nuclear operator EDF is €50 billion in debt. They make about €3 billion per year - and have between €150 - €200 billion investments on the table for the next 10 years. Go figure.

[0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#187

Post by arjie » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

They have a pretty small population, but wind will likely be intolerable because it will harm views[0]. Solar requires surface area as well. So that leaves hydro, which they'll have to pump during the summer months to ensure they have coverage for winter, or nuclear. Or fossil fuels, of course. Gas is still probably optimal for them. I suppose that's the nature of things. We all care very much about the climate, but we do care about our views more.

0: I personally like the look of wind turbines but I understand many don't. The appearance is likely why the Trump administration canceled such projects.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#188

Post by UltraSane » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #178

UltraSane wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China and South Korea can build nuclear reactors cheaply.

China and South Korea build everything more cheaply because they have a better developed industrial base. Solar and wind is still vastly cheaper for them and still much cheaper when paired with storage.

solar and wind is only cheaper up to a certain percentage of total power due to its unreliability. Every watt of wind and solar is subsidized by another dispatchable source. As a sysadmin it seems very comparable to the need to essentially buy 2x and only run things at 50% capacity.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#189

Post by adjejmxbdjdn » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

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.

1. Nuclear has a negative learning curve. It’s gotten more expensive with time. Part of the reason is increasing geopolitical risks (the U.S. just launched a war on Iran because of the possibility it may upgrade nuclear material to weapon capabilities), lost knowledge and expertise, and also the increasing relative cost of financing in the cost of energy projects.

2. Nuclear was built at a time when governments were much more likely to directly invest in energy projects. It didn’t have to compete with Labubus for private dollars.

3. Its current competition didn’t exist, given how much cheaper solar and wind have gotten, and how much cheaper battery tech has gotten with signs all of them will only get even cheaper. And on the non renewable side, natural gas has become incredibly cheaper as well.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#190

Post by ahtihn » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #170

Gud wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Switzerland is not part of the European economic area, aka EEA.