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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

#311

Post by Tuna-Fish »

tfourb wrote: post #306
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solar and wind anticorrelate more than you think They anticorrelate in some locations. In others, they don't. Here in Finland in the winter you get effectively zero sun. We also get persistent stationary anticyclones. That means potentially over a month of temps in the -30°C region, and zero wind. Australia is extremely sunny. California is even better, they are modeling that assuming they keep their current hydro…

> How on earth do you expect 7-8 to be enough? 300 isn't enough either. The real number for a fully renewable-based grid here is somewhere north of 2000. 2.000 hours of storage would equate to 83 full days of electricity demand. That's on its face absurd. Most models assume that a "Dunkelflaute" (span of time with significantly reduced solar and wind output) will last at most 10 days. Add a few days as a safety margi…

> Most models assume that a "Dunkelflaute" (span of time with significantly reduced solar and wind output) will last at most 10 days.

The longest recorded in Finland is 90 days. More than two weeks of it continuously happens nearly every winter.

> as the entire European electricity net is synchronized

It is not. The CESA is synchronized. The various peripheral areas are not part of it.

> Power transmission is a thing.

It is not a thing you can trust. We have only just gotten a very sharp reminder of that. We have a neighbor that likes to cut sea cables as a fun past-time activity.

> you can convert electricity into h2 or methane

I am very pro that, but this will take a very long time to build out.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#312

Post by TheDudeMan »

Arodex wrote: post #74
john_strinlai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Efficiency is not the problem. We have plenty of nuclear fuel.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#313

Post by eldaisfish »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #256
rayiner wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Note that China has started building battery banks at massive scale recently.

Is china building new coal plants or not?

Do you want to hazard a guess as to why?

The answer is because we still do not know how to supply expanding electricity demand with wind, solar and batteries. The side of the story that people on this website love to bring up is the fact that China happens to be the largest builder of solar and wind, which is true, but the increased electricity demand is being met via coal, for the most part.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#314

Post by AtlasBarfed »

palata wrote: post #298
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...You guys have mountains everywhere, which means dirt cheap hydro energy storage for solar and wind? I'm a lftr enthusiast, but everyone needs to keep in mind that fission is just fundamentally economically non-competitive compared to solar and wind. And all those stories about fusion being right around the corner? Yeah, that won't be economically competitive either. I personally am not in favor of closing down exi…

> I'm a lftr enthusiast, but everyone needs to keep in mind that fission is just fundamentally economically non-competitive compared to solar and wind. We're talking about a world were oil is going away. Switzerland is already using as much hydro as it can. Nuclear is not about replacing hydro, it's about replacing as much as it can of oil. Even with as much nuclear, hydro, wind and solar as they can, we as a society…

Build a solar plant in the Sahara desert and ship the energy long range,

Nuclear's probably still more expensive than that.

I'm not saying we give up on nuclear entirely. It should be at the well-funded research and prototyping phase for another 10 years.

In my opinion, at least for consumer energy, I think perovskite solar cells and sodium ion batteries for home storage will enable a very large oversupply or overcapacity start evening out the intermittent fears.

But admittedly I haven't not done the exact math

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#315

Post by Matumio »

palata wrote: post #294
Plankaluel wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding wind and mountains. Some perspective from someone from neighboring Tyrol: The reason there is so little wind power: Probably the same reason the western, alpine parts of Austria have basically zero wind power - and why neighbouring Carinthia recently voted in a referendum to ban it completely. People who live in the Alps generally don't like seeing the mountains altered. It is treated almost as sacrilege. A…

Also wind turbines kill birds and bats, it is an actual problem to be put in the balance. The balance being: do you build a ton of those turbines, or one nuclear plant?

They do and it's a problem, but it's a minor issue compared to, say, cars or rat poison. Both kill lots of birds, but somehow when it's wind turbines people suddenly care about the birds. See also: https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/technology-articles/...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#316

Post by indoordin0saur »

TheCondor wrote: post #245
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.

Did waste management become a solved problem? In Colorado they shut down their last reactor (a very modern, at the time, thorium unit) in 1989 and there is still tons of waste product onsite since Yucca mountain was the designated target for it and it never came online. It's in a river basin and the containment facility is supposedly insanely robust (can withstand 300mph winds, etc..) but it's still there and I think…

From what I understand the waste problem is tremendously overblown. Move it to some storage facility somewhere, that's fine. Just keep it on site, that's fine too. A typical gigawatt reactor produces about 20 tons of waste annually, which sounds like a lot but remember this stuff is quite dense, so it would actually take 4 years to fill up a standard shipping container.

The storage units for this stuff is incredibly robust and safe. Radioactive stuff is also incredibly easy to detect. No company or reactor could ever leak into the community in a covert way. People would know right away. IMO, this is much less scary than being next to a chemical plant.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#317

Post by coryrc »

tfourb wrote: post #292
coryrc wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In January 2025, solar generated 1.5TWh of electricity in Germany (in June it generated 10TWh): https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/electricity_generat... In January 2025, Germany burned about 236 TWh of fossil fuels. You cannot even mostly replace fossil fuels with solar.

Germany will need a total of 1,867 TWh per year in 2030, so an average of 155 TWh/month. fossil fuels are very inefficient when used in most applications (especially ICE and oil for heating). As countries use more and more electricity instead of fossil fuels to generate motion and heat, total energy demand will decrease accordingly. Currently, Germany imports almost all of its fossil fuel from abroad. Mainly Norway,…

> we paid dearly for that

And if you had invested in Drake Landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community solar setup instead of PV, then neither the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor Hormuz blockade would have been a huge deal. The cost of energy is destroying your industrial base.

> Also, Germany will (and does) a large share of it energy requirement ... from wind

15TWh in January 2025. Again, you burned about 230 TWh of fossil fuels. Nearly every heating system is over 80%, electricity closer to 50%, so lets say 150TWh. Do you have an order of magnitude more land and water you're able to put wind generation on? And are you willing to base your life and economy on not having Dunkelflaute?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#318

Post by ez_mmk »

UltraSane wrote: post #200
esarbe wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no measure by which nuclear energy is the "energy of the future". It's too complex, too expensive and it doesn't scale. SMRs are proving to be a fever dream with ever rising costs and the number of nuclear reactors in operation is decreasing year by year and both Wind and PV are now each producing more electricity than nuclear. Nuclear has had its moment. That moment is gone.

PWRs are not really that complicated. They are just very hot metal rods inside a thick steel pressure vessel that boil water to make steam. "Nuclear has had its moment. That moment is gone." When CO2 caused climate changed is posed to be civilization altering this is a very very foolish thing to say.

[dead]

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#319

Post by m101 »

It is depressing reading hacker news threads on nuclear power because of just how misinformed so many people still are. These things are all true, and it's on the reader for not knowing:

- nuclear power is expensive by choice. It is not inherent to nuclear power

- nuclear waste is not a problem

- nuclear energy comes in many forms. Not only high pressure reactors

- we are all going to be poorer, and live in a more polluted, higher CO2 world, because of all the people that choose to not inform themselves about the truth on nuclear

- the harms from radiation exposure are mostly precisely zero, and require large exposure to be non-zero

There really is no excuse for people to be misinformed. If you actually want to understand this issue start here, but there are many other sources out there that can also help:

gordianknotbook.com

Or the substack:

substack.com/@jackdevanney

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#320

Post by bit-anarchist »

Arodex wrote: post #56
bit-anarchist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What lobbyists? Concrete powder companies? Other governmental companies? Keep in mind similar things have been said about solar and wind previously.

Civil engineering, power equipment (ABB is a big firm in Switzerland), Energy companies (the market is Switzerland is a constellation of local monopolies, who have already announced they won't invest their own huge money reserves in nuclear, it will have to be all public money and garanties), etc.

Civil engineering and power equipment companies also profit from other plants. In fact, there are specialized power companies for wind and solar.

If private energy companies won't invest, then either don't invest public funding, or invest but with focus on developing long-term technologies. After all, the primary reason for nuclear being uneconomic today is lack of investment. If solar and wind can be made profitable, I don't see how nuclear is any different.

Still, the positive note of this is the ban lift, not whether new reactor will actually be built.

Can't speak for all countries, but lobbying for green energy in the USA, according to PACs, is higher than nuclear. I don't think Switzerland is different.

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