Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

bluewin.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#391

Post by legitster »

WalterBright wrote: post #376
legitster wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could do what the fossil fuel industry does and just disperse it into the atmosphere until it disappears behind background radiation. Realistically deep geologic storage is absolutely fine, and even if it's not happening now, all of the waste can be safely stored above ground for hundreds of years.

After the Fukushima disaster, radioactivity was detected in the seawater off the west cost of America. This, of course, threw people into a panic, despite being detectable only with very sensitive equipment and was not a danger to anyone or anything.

To be more specific, you would not have been able to detect Fukushima waste based on radioactivity, as the radioactivity would not have been detectable above the normal background radiation.

They could only identify the waste by it's distinct radiological profile. Otherwise it was just another source amongst millions of ionizing radiation that bathes us every day.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#392

Post by ivanjermakov »

christkv wrote: post #49
jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

You could build the reactors inside the mountains to improve the security and effects of things like meltdowns.

As if construction cost wasn't the biggest expense already.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#393

Post by bryanlarsen »

tcfhgj wrote: post #360
zchrykng wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pumped hydro is currently the cheapest long term energy storage by a significant amount.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#394

Post by legitster »

bilekas wrote: post #146
jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

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 has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though

France got there first.

They built out such a massive infrastructure of Nuclear that they are a net provider of energy in Europe. They are also the only country to date that has officially pushed back on old safety models like LNT.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#395

Post by Krasnol »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #316
TheCondor wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Waste which will be here for many generations of humans and can seriously harm them is overblown?

It never cases to amaze me how much blatant misinformation circulates around this topic.

Just a few years ago, nobody sane would have predicted Trump. How can anybody seriously predict what would happen to this waste in a few years? I'm not even talking about generations here.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#396

Post by chpatrick »

awesome_dude wrote: post #388
chpatrick wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's not that hard of a problem in general. There are plenty of abandoned mines with tons of space where you can forget about it forever.

This has to be snark - Waste is never safe to store - the containment has to prevent leeching - over a lifespan of thousand, or tens of thousands of years And it only takes one earthquake, or animal digging to completely upend that strategy

Sure, you need the right place, but it's not like there's a shortage of space far away from everything.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#397

Post by cm2187 »

bilekas wrote: post #146
jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

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.

I don’t think it can. Nuclear is cheap at scale, not when you build a single prototype every 20 years. You need large countries with large programmes to be successful.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#398

Post by thinkingtoilet »

UltraSane wrote: post #173
jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

"All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear" This is like firefighters opposing using water.

The time for nuclear power was 50 years ago. And it's sad due to unfounded fears and coal interests there weren't more built. I would love if historically we had build more nuclear power plants. I am against it now because we have other safer, cheaper, and more sustainable options.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#399

Post by Gibbon1 »

geden wrote: post #276
remarkEon wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It is a solved problem. It has been a solved problem as long as I’ve been alive, and the only reason we are in this situation is because a very sophisticated and organized network of activists convinced people that it is not a solved problem. I will never forgive the boomers for what they did here, it’s so incredibly sad. We could’ve had essentially free clean electricity but instead we shut down reactors “for t…

What is the solution? Where are the free nuclear plants? Sizewell C = £40 billion That’s a lot of PV solar and battery storage.

Trolling/Not Trolling. Imagine if we spent the money we did developing nuclear on photo voltaic and batteries instead. Because seriously we spent next to NOTHING on PV solar and batteries.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#400

Post by m101 »

SXX wrote: post #349
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.

https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-is-too-saf...
Post reply on HN