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

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#491

Post by leonidasrup » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #422

Krasnol wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Again, destroy a dam and you get a catastrophe. Don't do anything in particular and watch how many people die in the mid-term due to climate change. It's all about risk management.

The most deadly industrial accident was the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure, with estimates of the death toll ranging from 26,000 to 240,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#492

Post by fc417fc802 » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:38 PM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #186

rayiner wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.) De…

I'm not sure I agree but lets set that aside for now. Are you seriously suggesting that $50 billion per France equivalent over half a century would have been an unreasonable price to pay to avert climate change? It's just not a logically consistent or even remotely sensible position. The environmentalist movement undeniably got this one wrong and I say that as someone with views that would generally be categorized as such.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#493

Post by UltraSane » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:43 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #459

esarbe wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reactor has yet even reached the operating age of 60 years. That 80 years number is wholly speculative. We stopped building nuclear reactors in the 1970ies[0] because with the additional complexity to make them safe, the systems were just too expensive. It has nothing to do with "relentless irrational opposition". [0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

"safe" is a spectrum. While coal is allowed to kill millions of people a year, the safety level of nuclear in the US was raised to "no matter whatever happens no one ever anywhere must have harm come to them" and that's not realistic. Solar kills orders of magnitude more people than nuclear! But we haven't regulated rooftop solar out of existence, plus that wasn't even an option 50 years ago. That's 40 years we didn'…

Thankfully the US has now removed the linear no threshold model and the As Low As Reasonably Achievable radioactive emissions goal which were irrational and made nuclear much more expensive than it should be.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#494

Post by therealdrag0 » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

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.

Random fun fact: the mercury in fish you want to avoid is mostly because of coal burning!

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#495

Post by leonidasrup » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #450

indoordin0saur wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find this to be the most frustrating aspect of the nuclear discourse. The "waste problem" is technically solved (we believe, gotta wait ~10k years to know) in a way that depends on a social solution that doesn't seem to exist. Pro-nuke people will handwave it away, ignoring the total failure to secure storage sites in most places, and the anti-nuclear people treat it as a fatal flaw in the technology (which it isn'…

If you are looking in tritium leaks, I would encourage to look into leaks from coal power plants, which are gigantic in comparison to nuclear power plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#496

Post by Mawr » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

thomasmg wrote: post #238

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.

Solar, wind and hydro are all much cheaper, far safer and more efficient these days.

Those are all less safe than nuclear. It's a simple fact, look it up.

All the places that can use hydro already do. Oh, and it's pretty damaging to the environment, it turns out.

Wind and solar are pretty cool, but also unreliable, so it's not so clear that they're really cheaper after you account for overprovisioning and storage costs.

If only there was a safe and reliable source of energy we could use to complement them...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#497

Post by cameldrv » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

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…

It really never was that big of a problem. People make a big deal that it lasts 30,000 years, but there are many other types of waste, such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, etc, that will literally never go away, but we don't make people put those types of wastes in repositories that will last forever. Basically you just want to put it in a very remote place with a lot of earth over it. The good thing about nuclear waste is that it's so energy dense that there really isn't even that much of it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#498

Post by golem14 » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 10:56 PM UTC

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…

> We can't be buying France's nuclear energy all the time.

Actually, why not ? I mean this as a serious question.

Just like Oregon or New Mexico do not have problems getting (possibly nuclear) energy from California.

You just have to believe in the concept of Europe hard enough.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#499

Post by aeturnum » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 11:00 PM UTC

leonidasrup wrote: post #495

aeturnum wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be the most frustrating aspect of the nuclear discourse. The "waste problem" is technically solved (we believe, gotta wait ~10k years to know) in a way that depends on a social solution that doesn't seem to exist. Pro-nuke people will handwave it away, ignoring the total failure to secure storage sites in most places, and the anti-nuclear people treat it as a fatal flaw in the technology (which it isn'…

If you are looking in tritium leaks, I would encourage to look into leaks from coal power plants, which are gigantic in comparison to nuclear power plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly... https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10...

This is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Yes coal power is worse! I know that and clearly you know that. What are we even talking about?

So far, in the over half-century of efforts, the fact that coal is unsafe has never convinced anyone that nuclear power is safe. Those are two separate situations. I merely cited the tritium leaks as a counterexample of the hubris of the post I was replying to suggesting they would be immediately detected.

I do not think the approach you are taking has shown promise in convincing people to cite plants or house waste. If anything I think it's damaged it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#500

Post by Kon5ole » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 11:04 PM UTC

hereme888 wrote: post #381

Kon5ole wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nuclea…

Well, wind and solar were absolutely subsidy-driven. The difference is that after subsidies, they became cheap and modular, and I hope nuclear becoming modular and cheaper as well. Rancho Seco.... what an insane story. Didn't know about that. So if your have a bad nuclear project, people are basically stuck with it, unlike replacing solar panels or wind turbines.

I think it's possible that the actual construction of nuclear power plants could become cheap if they were mass produced, but I don't think that's the real problem.

The inherent long-lasting dangers of the fuel and waste are the real cost, and we are still in the first few percent of years where we have to pay for those. In 100 years, the french might be on synthesized fuels from solar and there will be a multibillion budget post dealing with the old nuclear plants that haven't generated anything for years.

Many plants are in the "downpayment of the construction costs" phase and current calculations are made on the idea that once paid for, nuclear is cheap. But that's not true.

There are costs for every nuclear plant that will come due 50-70-100+ years down the line and they are very rarely considered.

The "stuck with it" aspect is what bugs me the most. Once a few politicians today decide to get rich from building nuclear, many, many generations of people are robbed from the ability to make any decision on the matter afterwards. They get stuck with it.