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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

#351

Post by MobiusHorizons »

LinXitoW wrote: post #325
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…

What choices make nuclear expensive that we could actually get rid of WITHOUT IMMEDIATELY increasing risk (which is low because of regulation)? Moreover, it's crazy that so much regulation was provably written in blood paid by workers and public after a company got greedy. Sure, let's build 50 AND reduce regulations. Finally, the biggest fucking thing: It is MORE expensive NOW than the green alternatives, AND green e…

Renewables have been incredibly effective at providing more capacity at good cost, but they still have drawbacks. Aside from the obvious variability everyone harps on, location does play a nontrivial role. Switzerland is not as good a candidate for solar or wind as many other countries due to constraints in usable land and availability (valleys have more shade than steppes for instance). I don’t think anyone needs to be saying no to renewables when they consider investing in nuclear. The two technologies serve very different purposes in an electric grid. Base load is still a problem even with battery storage, and it makes a lot of sense to have reliable power available that is not from fossil fuels to deal with that demand. There is plenty of fossil fuel based generation to replace, it doesn’t have to all be nuclear or renewables, in fact all one or the other doesn’t make much sense.

It’s true nuclear is expensive. It’s also true a lot of that expense was the regulation that has made it so incredibly safe. It’s unlikely a cheaper but still safe enough compromise will be reached in countries with existing regulatory structures quickly, but there is certainly room to improve over time.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#352

Post by lloeki »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #343
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?

I read it thusly: not "(mostly precisely) zero" but "mostly (precisely zero)"

i.e in most reasonable cases the risk is exactly zero and conversely it takes extreme scenarios for the risk to be non-zero.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#353

Post by m101 »

chinathrow wrote: post #339
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…

Can you elaborate why waste is not a problem?

Ok, in my own words it's something like this:

- nuclear waste, after a period of the order of ~10e2/3 years is only dangerous if ingested. So it's as dangerous as any other poisonous substance after that point. There is no need for radiation shielding from that point.

- nuclear waste is very dense and so physical surface storage is cheap, and a solved problem (see: dry storage casks). We can fix leaks if/when they happen. Waste is concentrated

- current nuclear power stations (light water reactors) burn about 3% of their fuel leaving 97% unused in waste. There are nuclear power solutions which would burn most of the fuel (leaving very little for waste). So if we developed these technologies (see molton salt reactors being one of them) then nuclear waste would no longer be called "waste" as it would suddently become an extremely valuable feedstock for use in reactors.

- related to the prior point: why is it that we think we will not find a use for this very valuable and rare reasource in the future. We should think of nuclear "waste" storage as "rare element storage" which will be very useful under some states of the world. We just don't know how yet.

- as with any technology it should also be compared to the alternative when considering it's fitness: waste from the alternatives is far worse

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#354

Post by gmanley »

lolc wrote: post #328
jrflowers wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has over 7,500 reactor years of cumulative reactor operation, and nuclear powered ships have steamed over 175 million miles. Since the inception of the program, there has never been an accident involving a naval reactor nor a release of radioactivity to the environment which has adversely affected public health or safety. https://www.nr-ha.org/history

> ... which has adversely affected public health or safety. Why would they tack that on at the end of a very long sentence? Because they don't want to talk about the loss of USS Scorpion. They mention the sub once on the whole page and even misspell it as "Scorpian". Would not trust them as a source.

>Since the inception of the program, there has never been an accident involving a naval reactor nor a release of radioactivity

None of the theories put forward about the loss of the USS Scorpion have involved the reactor. Maybe they didn't discuss it because it wasn't relevant?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#355

Post by yodelshady »

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…

Batteries cost > $100 / kWh, the industry still considers that a target to brag about: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/lithium-ion-...

This is WHOLESALE BOM price, which is about as useful as the price of uranium.

That is horrifically expensive.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#356

Post by lemoncucumber »

m101 wrote: post #353
chinathrow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate why waste is not a problem?

Ok, in my own words it's something like this: - nuclear waste, after a period of the order of ~10e2/3 years is only dangerous if ingested. So it's as dangerous as any other poisonous substance after that point. There is no need for radiation shielding from that point. - nuclear waste is very dense and so physical surface storage is cheap, and a solved problem (see: dry storage casks). We can fix leaks if/when they ha…

~10e2/3 is a very unclear what of writing whatever number you're trying to write

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#357

Post by onraglanroad »

rayiner wrote: post #212
adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Nuclear has never been financially viable We literally have a whole-ass G7 country that went 75% nuclear back in the 80s.

Because it was paid for by the taxpayer.

Why are you suddenly in favour of socialist projects? Shouldn't you be saying they should be privately funded and lets see if they can make a profit selling their electricity?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#358

Post by Matumio »

durandal1 wrote: post #322
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 only fair way to compare the cost to solar and wind, is if wind and solar producers would have to make power guarantees 24/7 and cover the cost of the production gaps (hint: this makes solar and wind very expensive).

Not sure if that's fair. Sometimes the sun actually does shine, and while you won't get rich selling energy during that time, having electricity available essentially for free during some of the peak hours is worth something. Someone will eventually find a use for free energy. If nothing else, at least we can turn off all coal, gas and oil plants while the sun shines.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#359

Post by duped »

chinathrow wrote: post #339
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…

Can you elaborate why waste is not a problem?

Here's a decent page outlining how the industry deals with waste:

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

Basically, nuclear waste from power generation is a much smaller problem than people assume it to be, the solutions for managing it are already in place, and there have been few/if any accidents that have ever caused contamination from waste disposal.

Also I'm not an industry shill, but orphan sources from industrial/medical radiography have killed and injured more people than nuclear plants and their waste. Yet there's hardly the amount of opposition to those systems that you see for nuclear power, despite nuclear power having a far more significant impact on the healthiness and stability of global populations if we stopped banning it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#360

Post by tcfhgj »

zchrykng wrote: post #207
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…

How much do those batteries cost and can they supply power for multiple days or a season if your renewable sources aren't providing like normal? Not to mention the environmental damage from producing and disposing of batteries.

I agree, there are better options for mass scale long term energy storage than batteries, e.g. (green) hydrogen, methane
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