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Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
~10e2/3 is a very unclear what of writing whatever number you're trying to write
100-1000 years order of magnitude. I can't remember exactly, but it's well within our ability to engineer and manage, rather than the signs that try to answer the "how do we communicate danger to later species" types of timelines
That is a not solved timeframe, at all. We might have a war at a storage facility for years and everything falls apart.
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#663Earlier 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…
If... we developed... that is not the definition of solved.
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#664Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
You cannot make regular nuclear weapons out of thorium
"Unlike natural uranium, natural thorium contains only trace amounts of fissile material (such as Th-231), which are insufficient to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. Additional fissile material or another neutron source is necessary to initiate the fuel cycle. In a thorium-fuelled reactor, Th-232 absorbs neutrons to produce U-233. Depending on the design of the reactor and fuel cycle, the generated U-233 either fissions in situ or is chemically separated from the used nuclear fuel and formed into new nuclear fuel."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
Many of specific issue around design nuclear weapons based on U-233 are classified. But:
"A declassified 1966 memo from the US nuclear program stated that uranium-233 has been shown to be highly satisfactory as a weapons material, though it was only superior to plutonium in rare circumstances. It was claimed that if the existing weapons were based on uranium-233 instead of plutonium-239, Livermore would not be interested in switching to plutonium.
The co-presence of uranium-232 can complicate the manufacture and use of uranium-233, though the Livermore memo indicates a likelihood that this complication can be worked around."
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 .
All of the EPR builds in Finland/France/UK have seen enormous construction cost (3-4x) and time (decade+) overruns. France expects its EPR2 builds to cost about 30% less but even if they manage to hit that target it will still be extremely expensive.
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you drill holes into the outer containment hull.
What if you destroy a dam? It would be catastrophic too... but nobody votes against dams for some reason.
Some construction workers really did drill into the primary containtainment in one of Switzerlands NPPs though.
https://ensi.admin.ch/de/2014/07/07/bohrloecher-im-primaerco...
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time this argument comes up, “it’s too slow and expensive “, I ask that person to please explain to me how my home country Sweden managed to build all those reactors in the 70s and 80s both fast and cheap? They’ve been amazing for us, despite the fact that some of them was recklessly shutdown prematurely by an ignorant political class.
What counts as "fast and cheap" ? For the renewables "Fast and cheap" turns out to mean you get the paperwork in the winter and you build a solar farm that summer, it's not quite sowing wheat - teams of competent people building the farm isn't the same thing as just chucking the seeds into the dirt with a machine, but the timeframe isn't so different. Sweden's nuclear plants seem to have taken maybe 6+ years from bre…
It took 5 years from construction start to grid connection for Oskarshamn R3, at the time the reactor with the world’s highest rated output. Since it began operating it has produced 350TWh.
That nuclear power must take forever is a myth and is only due to dysfunctional politics.
That “you get a permit in the winter and it’s done by summer” is a totally bogus claim. Perhaps for some tiny installation compared to a power plant with 1.5GW output.
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/o...
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that China has started building battery banks at massive scale recently.
Is china building new coal plants or not? Do you want to hazard a guess as to why? The answer is because we still do not know how to supply expanding electricity demand with wind, solar and batteries. The side of the story that people on this website love to bring up is the fact that China happens to be the largest builder of solar and wind, which is true, but the increased electricity demand is being met via coal, f…
It's probably because they have a lot of coal and not much natural gas.
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking about building new, now, with very expensive nuclear and very cheap and performant solar. Not entirely a good faith argument given the Op's sentiment about the wasted past. Or, let me rephrase, how much fossils have been burned to date because nuclear got basically snuffed? We can probably express an answer in Celsius.
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.
And yet China is building new nuclear plants just as fast as it's building solar and wind. It's almost as if the "grinding halt" was political in nature.
Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
#670This 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.
Also not in the EU.