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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

#341

Post by gpm »

m101 wrote: post #319

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 po…

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

Nuclear power is fundamentally expensive. It's large pieces of infrastructure, involving handling and securing extremely dangerous materials.

Solar panels, wind, and batteries have all dropped in price so much that solar backed by batteries to create stable powers (and/or wind doing the same, or a mix), is in the vast majority of the world vastly cheaper than nuclear.

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

All of which are fundamentally expensive.

> - 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

Every kw of nuclear production we create is resources we could have instead put into adding more than 1 kw of solar backed with batteries at this point. Moreover the other renewables would come online and displace fossil fuel usage faster. Thus spending money on nuclear results in a more polluted higher CO2 world, not the other way around.

There was a time when nuclear was the cheapest way to build clean energy, that time has passed and isn't coming back.

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

Many people have died from radiation exposure. Many people have gotten cancer from radiation exposure years later. Many many square kilometers of earth have been rendered uninhabitable by distribution of radioactive isotopes. This is misinformation and spreading it is frankly dangerous. A very healthy dose of respect is required whenever handling radioactive materials and people should not be told otherwise.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#342

Post by chinathrow »

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…

What about insurance though?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#343

Post by Forgeties79 »

m101 wrote: post #319

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 po…

> the harms from radiation exposure are mostly precisely zero

You had me until this. “Mostly precisely”? What does that even mean man?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#344

Post by Kon5ole »

hereme888 wrote: post #117
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.

The estimated levelized cost of electricity changes dramatically with financing cost: from roughly the low-$100s/MWh under cheap capital to well above $200/MWh under high capital-cost assumptions. But wasn't that the case for wind and solar too?

For solar I believe it's profitable without subsidies in most parts of the world by now. It's the fastest growing power source by far worldwide and it wouldn't be if it had to be financed by subsidies.

I don't know enough about wind to say either way about that.

But both wind and solar have the benefit of being able to just abandon the plants if they turn out to lose money. Which you of course cannot do with a nuclear plant.

Rancho Seco in the US has had a taxpayer financed security crew for 36 years without producing any electricity. That costs eats away at the profits (if any) generated by the plant when it was operational, but nobody keeps track of that.

The costs are not relevant to the nuclear operator and are not retroactively counted as costs for the electricity, since the government pays.

But they pay with our money. And our children's money. And their children's money.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#345

Post by bryanlarsen »

MakersF wrote: post #326
bryanlarsen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need both 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. L…

The marginal cost of batteries grows more than linearly. When batteries are covering 0% of the need, the marginally added battery cycles many times, so the cost is spread over many kwh produced. When you add batteries to go from 99.98 to 99.99, the batteries cycle only for that 0.01, so the same cost to build them is spread over a much fewer kwh, making each kwh produced a lot more expensive. Seasonal storage is madn…

Per Ember Energy reports, a cost optimal new build grid is between 90% - 97% solar/wind/battery, and between 3% to 10% gas peaker depending on how much sun/wind your locale gets.

But you can't replace the gas peaker with 3% or 10% nuclear because in essence that gas peaker is supplying 100% of the power 3% to 10% of the time.

So you'd have to build nuclear plants that can supply 100% of the power. But once you have that you might as well use nuclear power 100% of the time because the rest is irrelevant. But that's about as far from cost-optimal as you can get.

As you mentioned, using batteries for seasonal storage is madness. So to get to 100% carbon free you have at least 2 other options:

1. use a different form of seasonal storage. China is experimenting with this. In 2026 they will double the world's pumped hydro storage capacity. But doubling isn't a lot -- the world doesn't have much pumped hydro. But it does mean they might start doing it at China scale in a few years.

2. Overbuild to avoid the need for seasonal storage. Solar works on cloudy days and in the winter. It just doesn't work very well. So you need a lot of it. Which is expensive, but still a heck of a lot cheaper than batteries for seasonal storage.

In reality, most places will probably say that 95% or 99% carbon reduction is good enough and keep their backup natural gas generators around for the occasional dankelflaute.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#346

Post by justsid »

croes wrote: post #274
GL26 wrote: post #19

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 energy is still turning water to steam, no really future like. Turning sun light to electricity on the other hand is more that

The fissile elements and the oxygen that makes up water already came from stars.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#347

Post by shin_lao »

gpm wrote: post #341
m101 wrote: post #319

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 po…

> - nuclear power is expensive by choice. It is not inherent to nuclear power Nuclear power is fundamentally expensive. It's large pieces of infrastructure, involving handling and securing extremely dangerous materials. Solar panels, wind, and batteries have all dropped in price so much that solar backed by batteries to create stable powers (and/or wind doing the same, or a mix), is in the vast majority of the world…

Could you please read the resources above that debunk the points you just made?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#348

Post by embedding-shape »

eimrine wrote: post #254
embedding-shape wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah what the hell, I want tiny and small nuke-batteries so we can finally get cars and phones that doesn't need charging anymore, would solve a lot of problems and surely won't introduce any new ones.

What you really need is 24/7 power supply, it might become a luxury to have uninterrupted electricity exactly as it is a luxury to have enough of fresh water.

When you're in one place, you'll just have a battery+solar I bet, but for when on the go, maybe for days, having a tiny nuclear battery that lasts N years would be great.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#349

Post by SXX »

m101 wrote: post #319

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 po…

Biggest problem is that people not aware of how many closed down or not built nuclear power plants been replaced with coal power plants.

And coal kills more people in a week than all nuclear incidents killed in all history of humanity.

Not even mention that coal power plants release more radioactive materials too.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#350

Post by onraglanroad »

lenerdenator wrote: post #244
jltsiren wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the bids for the third reactor was for KEPCO's APR-1400. Like the other bids, it was too expensive to make sense without subsidies. China probably fits in the "politically undesirable" category these days.

> China probably fits in the "politically undesirable" category these days. Considering the Europeans are currently hollowing out their industrial base by importing Chinese EVs instead of building their own, I don't see a nuclear reactor being a bridge too far.

European car manufacturers have been given every opportunity and encouragement to build EVs and the phrase "dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century" springs to mind.

People are buying BYD because they're better cars, not because they're forced to.

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