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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

#681

Post by Gareth321 »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #562
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. It's crazy that the left and green parties are against cheap, sustainable and clean energy for the masses.

I've become increasingly disillusioned with the modern environmental movement. I support efforts to reduce CO2 production, and nuclear is one of the best ways to do that. This is an absolute no-brainer. Instead, when I talk with activists, they have a much greater focus on people using less energy. As though that will have no human impact.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#682

Post by chickenbig »

Arodex wrote: post #143
chickenbig wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thermodynamics are the reason why SMR aren't, and will never, be economical. And the link between thermodynamics and the price of electricity is what?

Your small nuclear reactor is going to need almost as much engineering , plumbing, safety mechanism, personnel, maintenance, etc... as your big nuclear reactor.

> almost as much engineering , plumbing, safety mechanism, personnel, maintenance, etc

Sure, that is economics, not thermodynamics. I don't necessarily agree with the SMR manifesto, but it is conceivable that improved financing, construction, operation and oversight could make an SMR cheaper than a larger reactor.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#683

Post by laurencerowe »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #289
pepperoni_pizza wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it also depends on other stuff. Spain gets bunch of sun even when there's the deepest winter in Finland but even if they are technically part of the same grid, the challenge is getting the energy there.

Spain and Finland are not part of the same grid. Spain is in the CESA, Finland is in the NSA.

Being part of the same grid doesn't matter so much as the amount of interconnection available. Finland has a higher proportion than Spain since France has stalled on building more interconnection capacity as this will likely reduce the amount they can sell their excess nuclear generation to Germany.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#684

Post by chickenbig »

palata wrote: post #281
0-_-0 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if it's mass produced

Let's distribute the risk everywhere, what could go wrong?

Siting of an SMR is somewhat different (albeit related) to the SMR concept itself. You might cluster them together (like the plans for 3 RR SMR at Wylfa and 3 at Ringhals in Sweden).

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#685

Post by laurencerowe »

tfourb wrote: post #330
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most models assume that a "Dunkelflaute" (span of time with significantly reduced solar and wind output) will last at most 10 days. The longest recorded in Finland is 90 days. More than two weeks of it continuously happens nearly every winter. > as the entire European electricity net is synchronized It is not. The CESA is synchronized. The various peripheral areas are not part of it. > Power transmission is a thing…

> The longest recorded in Finland is 90 days. Not trying to diss Finnland, but the country requires less than 1,000,000 Terrajoulehours of energy per year. That's like a few percent of Germany's usage. I'm sure Europe could cover you. > It is not. The CESA is synchronized. The various peripheral areas are not part of it. You are correct. But transmission lines do exist and synchronization would be possible. The balti…

> You are correct. But transmission lines do exist and synchronization would be possible. The baltic countries have done so in 2025 to get away from the Russian grid.

There's no point in synchronizing the Nordics / Britain / Ireland with CESA grids since they are interconnected with HVDC rather than AC.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#686

Post by chickenbig »

laurencerowe wrote: post #665
chickenbig wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Indeed, it might be said that they underestimated the cost and timescales to get the project off the ground. But this is generally the case with mega-projects. Guess we shall see how the construction of Sizewell C goes.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#687

Post by laurencerowe »

EinigeKreise wrote: post #645
pydry wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They anticorrelate in some locations. In others, they don't. Here in Finland in the winter you get effectively zero sun. Virtually nowhere gets zero sun. Finland is also unusually blessed with tons and tons of hydropower potential which functions both as a battery as well as power generation. As well as a very low population density. It is also possibly the best advert for not using nuclear power ever given the disa…

> Finland is also unusually blessed with tons and tons of hydropower potential which functions both as a battery as well as power generation. Where did you get that idea from? This isn't Norway; we don't have any mountains. The country is mostly flat and most of the suitable locations already have a hydropower plant since the 1970s.

I am very pessimistic about the economics of nuclear power but Finland is basically the best case scenario for it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#688

Post by kubanczyk »

dgrin91 wrote: post #625
thelastgallon wrote: post #567

Two things to keep in mind when thinking about nuclear 1) Has the lowest deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... 2) Any country that is not US absolutely needs to invest in nuclear technology. This is for your own security. In addition to providing energy security, it also provides physical security (with a bit more work). Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to: 1)…

I'm pretty nuclear, but I don't understand how having nuclear power prevents vulnerability to direct attack? If anything it would concentrate your risks - your energy now comes from fewer, more centralized and more fragile sources

> I'm pretty nuclear

I'm atomic, FWIW.

> how having nuclear power prevents vulnerability to direct attack?

OP alluded to a well-known bonus capability of nuclear power plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239#Production

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#689

Post by slow_typist »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #632
matheusmoreira wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Any country without nuclear weapons is at the mercy of those that do. It's just strategic. Might as well get some clean energy out of it.

This seems clearly not very true; Iran didn’t seem very at the mercy of the US this year. There is a ton of resistance to actually using nuclear weapons, seemingly making them practically irrelevant.

Also, for a single Country getting the capabilities might be a plus but if some 100+ countries have nuclear weapons, all countries are in a worse position than today. This is a sub zero sum game.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#690

Post by leonidasrup »

frollogaston wrote: post #555
leonidasrup wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waste management has been solved problem. "A number of mercury, cyanide and arsenic waste repositories are operating worldwide including Canada (Giant Mine) and Germany (potash mines in Herfa-Neurode and Zielitz). Radioactive waste storage sites are under construction with the Onkalo in Finland being the most advanced." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository "The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP…

Every time someone mentions a year where nuclear started being "safe," I find an incident after that year where radioactive or otherwise toxic materials were leaked into the surrounding environment, plus plenty of near misses. Broader than waste though. Maybe focus on how the likely alternatives are worse. The world isn't going to run completely on renewables, and coal puts surefire poison AND radioactive isotopes in…

You would be surprised how much toxic industrial waste is been currently stored in deep geological repositories in Europe.

https://www.kpluss.com/en-us/our-business-products/waste-man...

For example Herfa-Neurode underground repository contains (as of 2025):

690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans , 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury, 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide, and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untertagedeponie_Herfa-Neurode

So nuclear waste is not a technical problem, mostly political problem.

And it's not very much talk about, but the real issue is geopolitics. Each nuclear trans-uranium waste repository (spend nuclear fuel) could in future be mined to retrieve the stored plutonium for nuclear weapons. And even better, over centuries the most radioactive short lived isotopes are transmuted into more stable isotopes, so the mining and handling of this material is much easier. And even even better over millennia, the undesirable isotope Plutonium-240 (with half-life 6561 year, much shorter then Plutionium-239 half-life 24110 years) will decay away and the reactor-grade Plutonium waste will itself transform, without any external action, into very usable weapon-grade Plutonium.

Therefor spend nuclear fuel and storage of spend nuclear fuel in non-weapon countries is subject to monitoring by the enhanced verification measures of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Additional Protocol.

https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs07lyman.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation#Addition...

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons-grade_plutonium

U.S. goes to great lengths to prevent other countries from acquiring material usable for nuclear weapons. Like, for example retrieving plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan.

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/plutonium-mountain-...

"The Megatons to Megawatts Program, also called the United States-Russia Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement, was an agreement between Russia and the United States whereby Russia converted 500 metric tons of "excess" weapons-grade uranium (enough for 20,000 warheads) into 15,000 metric tons of low enriched uranium, which was purchased by the US for use in its commercial nuclear power plants."

"The program was credited for being one of the most successful disarmament programs in history, but its low set price for nuclear fuel caused Western companies to not invest in uranium refining capacity, resulting by 2022 in Russia's government-owned Rosatom becoming the supplier of about 50% of the world's enriched uranium, and 25% of the nuclear fuel used in the US."

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

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