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

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#651

Post by rcbdev » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

crote wrote: post #582

Danox wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese have built a small thorium reactor for research and development, and they went on to build a much larger Thorium reactor which they have refueled on the fly without taking it out of service. I am still surprised that America hasn’t it treated it like a Sputnik moment, but we live in different times than the mid late 1950s. I think we’re waiting for the Chinese to ship it around the world like EV cars. Ima…

> Imagine a Thorium reactor that can be put into the bowels of a Hospital or an office building basement and supply electrical power. Imagine the terrorism we'll see when highly radioactive material is within reach of any disgruntled office worker.

Please read Directive (EU) 2022/2557 and then tell me how a disgruntled office worker is supposed to do anything they aren't supposed to, given full compliance with the directive. I've seen some preliminary national implementation efforts and it's really serious stuff physical security wise.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#652

Post by tribaal » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

palata wrote: post #301

tribaal wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind is not that developed in Switzerland because it's not actually that great of a situation... We have a lot of steep mountains which make building wind farms a real challenge, and the flat plains in between have "meh" levels of wind. And a very strong NIMBY mentality. We do have some projects but those are more exception than rule. The really awesome wind spots are more the coastal or offshore farms, which... well…

> Mine is a net producer for example. All year? And do you mean you "inject" more than you "pull", or do you mean that you can live without ever pulling anything from the grid? Because "being a net producer overall" doesn't say that it would work in practice if everyone was doing the same, right?

Almost the latter - I can almost live without pulling anything from the grid. The huge caveat being that my system is way oversized for a normal house, since my building is multi-use (including commercial tenants who obviously only need power during the day). I am definitely injecting more during the summer though, of course.

I have a 40kWp system and a 20kWh battery.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#653

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #627

throwthrowuknow wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like they said, if it’s properly stored and monitored it’s not going to harm anyone. If you’re worried about some kind of societal collapse leading to it being abandoned, well in that case there are much bigger problems that are more immediately dangerous.

Do you know it will still be properly monitored in 100 years? What about 1000? How would you know if there are even people left who know what it is?? May be societal collapse isn't a problem. Maybe we're having a nice new beginning but someone finds some nice, warm stuff?

In 100 years: sure.

Unless we have civilizational collapse in which case a bit of nuclear waste will be the least of our problems.

It won't have to be monitored for a 1000 years. First, by that time the level of radioactivity is very low, and when it's in a deep-geological repository (like the ones we already use for vastly greater amounts of highly toxic chemicals that never decay) it is gone. We know enough about how geology works.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#654

Post by chickenbig » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #172

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.

Political will is not the actual bottleneck. Finland has given the initial permit for three nuclear reactors in the past 25 years. One was eventually built after massive delays and cost overruns. Another was canceled, because the company chosen to build it first proved to be incompetent and later also politically undesirable. As for the third reactor, the company that got the permit determined that it makes more sens…

> One was eventually built after massive delays and cost overruns.

Areva underbid on the fixed price contract to win against the ABWR, IIRC. Admittedly the Fins were not pleased at the time overrun, but the construction cost was historically not so bad given it was FOAK in a country without recent construction experience .

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#655

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #628

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct as long as we still have Geiger counters.. I’m not sure what kind of apocalypse you’re planning for. Maybe get a radon detection kit for your basement.

I'm not planning for anything because you can't plan for the next decade atm. How would you plan for 100s and 1000s of years? We should REDUCE the danger to those generations and not make it larger for no sane reason.

Nuclear is REDUCING the overall danger.

Because the alternatives are much more dangerous.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#656

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

Jolter wrote: post #229

Arodex wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i feel like available space, time to complete construction All of these favor again bigger reactors. >considering the length of time and sheer number of people, companies, and governments considering/investing in SMR tech it seems unlikely to be a mania. All of the Swiss energy companies are asking to be bailed out in advance of the investment in nuclear.

Sweden recently did the same: in order for companies to agree to make new reactors, the government had to promise them a price floor for the electricity they produce. The price floor suggested is more than twice the current price on the spot market. That means that, for the lifetime of those reactors, Swedish taxpayers will be subsidizing production of nuclear power. I thought the idea was that they would be profitab…

The biggest risk for nuclear is the government.

That's why the government has to indemnify the companies against those risks.

Spot market prices are not total system costs.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#657

Post by skew-aberration » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:50 AM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #535

leonidasrup wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Coal plant waste is visibly a nightmare, mountains of toxic dust, only "mildly" radioactive but also chemically toxic and physically dangerous. If that was the other option you'd have my support for a nuclear plant - but it isn't the other option. Today the alternate project might well be renewables and BESS, and even if it's fossil fuels it will be natural gas. Natural gas waste isn't roses and kittens, but on every…

Nuclear is the other option, and cherry picking the most generous data from a deindustrialised economy is a far less meaningful metric than you seem to think.

I wish people like you, who care genuinely about this topic, would engage with it in a more holistic way.

* Removing fossil fuels requires massively increasing the grid capacity by electrifying a vast range of extraction, refining, and manufacturing processes. The grid data you are looking at is about 1/5 of the real energy economy * That extra load is almost entirely baseload - running large smelters, furnaces, etc intermittently is infeasible and would use even more energy * This real energy economy is hidden in deindustrialised western countries, where the people depend on energy consuming processes in faraway lands - energy is 'imported' in the form of finished products like cheap building materials. It never shows up in grid usage * The reality is that the countries where energy is consumed will use as much renewable energy as possible, when it is cheaper to do so, but will rely on fossil fuels to supply the bulk of the baseload demand * The UK 's energy policy will be a rounding error in this decision-making process

Also why are you celebrating an increase in energy price? That's backwards logic. If the energy price had instead fallen to £60, you and every other consumer would be better off

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#658

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:50 AM UTC

crote wrote: post #564

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base load generation. Yes, we have hydro. Wind is way too unpredictable, solar is too. So, we can only have 2 powers to provide base load in Sweden. https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/

Nuclear base load is a lie. The aforementioned subsidies aren't just for the electricity it produces, it is also for the electricity it could produce. The nuclear plant has a right to sell electricity to the grid at a certain price. Market price too low? The government pays the difference. No demand? The government buys the unused production capacity. In practice this means that during periods of excess you are shutt…

Giving priority to non-reliable producers is insane.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#659

Post by chickenbig » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:51 AM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #317

tfourb wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany will need a total of 1,867 TWh per year in 2030, so an average of 155 TWh/month. fossil fuels are very inefficient when used in most applications (especially ICE and oil for heating). As countries use more and more electricity instead of fossil fuels to generate motion and heat, total energy demand will decrease accordingly. Currently, Germany imports almost all of its fossil fuel from abroad. Mainly Norway,…

> we paid dearly for that And if you had invested in Drake Landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community solar setup instead of PV, then neither the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor Hormuz blockade would have been a huge deal. The cost of energy is destroying your industrial base. > Also, Germany will (and does) a large share of it energy requirement ... from wind 15TWh in January 2025. Again, yo…

> then neither the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor Hormuz blockade would have been a huge deal. The cost of energy is destroying your industrial base.

Domestic heating has little to do with industrial base. Fertilizer prices would still have risen. Grain supplies would still be affected.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#660

Post by 127 » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 6:01 AM 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…

The fact that so many European green parties have been so strongly anti-nuclear was always a bit of a head-scratcher for me. It seems so dumb on so many different fronts. Goes to show the power of uninformed public, wildly misleading or actively lying stereotypes and scaremongering.