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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

#601

Post by DarkUranium »

Kon5ole wrote: post #249
cryptonym wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France also produces less CO2, sell electricity at reasonable and stable cost. If fossil fuel weren't massively subsided (impact the environment for free, wars with taxpayer money), Nuclear would have made a massive dent. Producing the same with other sources will have a massive immediate impact on the land / environment.

I like the idea that fossil fuel should take the hit from the impact on the environment, but don't see why nuclear should at the same time get a free pass for Chernobyl and Fukushima. Surely nuclear needs to take the hit from those as well in order to make the comparison apples-to-apples?

Coal in the US alone kills one Chernobyl of people each year.

(using estimates for Chernobyl --- so, in coal's advantage, as Chernobyl's confirmed deaths are actually very low)

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#602

Post by 15155 »

crote wrote: post #565
15155 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HEU results in fewer actinide products and a substantially more-compact reactor.

So in other words: a non-naval SMR which doesn't use HEU is going to be substantially larger - which would make it substantially more expensive, and therefore not representative of civilian SMRs?

Who said anything about expense? Why does "bigger" equal "more expensive?" Lead, concrete, etc. are cheap on land, but volume is a precious resource on a ship. HEU isn't the only reactor fuel out there, either.

And of course, all non-naval reactors are naturally going to be larger: they aren't surrounded by a practically-infinite fluid heatsink.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#603

Post by herewulf »

remarkEon wrote: post #551
bjourne wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the nuclear Dolchstoßlegende. Since the mid 1980's nuclear construction basically came to a grinding halt, due to cost overruns and delays. It has never recovered and never will. Economics, not a Greenpeace conspiracy, killed new nuclear and also will kill current nuclear. It's not much to cry about that inefficient stuff gets replaced with more efficient stuff.

This is a mischaracterization of what happened. The economics got bad because of regulatory pressures, and regulatory pressures increased because of anti-nuclear sentiment, and … … Anti-nuclear sentiment is directly downstream from organized campaigns by organizations like Greenpeace, yes, but also left-aligned political parties that, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, decided make killing nuclear their enti…

The fossil fuel industry quietly funneled money to these groups to discredit nuclear which competes with gas/coal for base load. Solar/wind only partially compete because at times they produce nothing so the grid still needs base load (usually "natural" gas these days).

Thanks for all the extra greenhouse gases, Greenpeace!

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#604

Post by DarkUranium »

Handrail wrote: post #579
nxy wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Decades" is an extreme POV. Big tech companies are actively investing into nuclear power. Unlike those green renewables you described, nuclear runs almost nonstop. At least 90%+ of the time! Let's not forget about China, who can do it faster and cheaper compared to western standards. Obviously short term we'll be forced to use gas, renewables, etc. But saying nuclear will be irrelevant is wrong.. Reliable 24/7 clean…

It's not clean though? It requires massive amounts of mining and refining to even get the fuel, and it's no more renewable than fossiles

If you include Uranium in the oceans, we have about 4.5 billion years of fuel.

It's no less renewable than the Sun.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#605

Post by awesome_dude »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #511
awesome_dude wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until we find the Rosetta stone hieroglyphs were unintelligible, and that language only stopped being used 2000 years ago.

I guess they won’t have Geiger counters in the future

We don't have a lot of technology that we knew existed in earlier civilisations - the Aztecs, Mayans, pueblo peoples, the Easter islanders, to name just a few were doing things we have no idea how to do

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#607

Post by SoftTalker »

onraglanroad wrote: post #350
lenerdenator wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They are cheaper cars. Not at all sure they're better.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#608

Post by cogman10 »

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?

Skyscraper windows kill birds and bats.

It's not a real problem. If it were actually a problem you should be able to walk under a wind turbine and find a bunch of dead birds/bats. The reality is you might find 1 or 2, but not enough to actually observe any sort of impact on the population. Outdoor cats are a far bigger menace to birds and bats.

So yeah, you build a ton of those turbines. Because by the time you can deploy 1 1GW plant (10 to 20 years) you can install 10 or 20 times that much power generation via wind. By the time the nuclear plant is operational, you can be talking about refurbishing some of the early installed turbines.

A nuclear plant requires fuel sourcing, waste management, engineering and planning, constant management and monitoring, security, and a fairly large construction footprint for the likes of the cooling towers.

Wind requires someone to go grease the gears once a year.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#609

Post by dalyons »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #269
pydry wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what the oil and nuclear industry propaganda says. The reality is that solar and wind anticorrelate more than you think, demand shifting (e.g. charging the car when it's sunny) is easier than you think, batteries and pumped storage and power2gas are cheaper than you think and nuclear power is way, way, way, way more expensive than you think. Weather based models with actual data say that in Australia you'd ne…

> 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…

Finland is the definition of an outlier, and folks in similar situations make up a tiny percentage of the world population. They can burn gas for the next 50 years, and we can still be good.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#610

Post by cogman10 »

Matumio wrote: post #315
palata wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/...

People that repeat these lies are very incurious. It's incredible how quickly and easily this lie can be debunked yet it still comes up at the same time wind does. It's almost as bad as the "wind turbines cause cancer" BS. Fortunately people usually have enough common sense to see how ridiculous that one is. But not always.
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