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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

#701

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

throw0101c wrote: post #550
tfourb wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death. The only reason why "environmentalists" were able to influence the debate around nuclear is because nuclear is uneconomical and studded with actual, real problems. Look at fossil fuels. Environmentally and in terms of public health it is way worse than nuclear (at least a current respective buildout levels). And environmentalists hav…

> "Cheap nuclear" is a pipe dream that has never been realized. Not even Chinese nuclear (no environmentalists there) is anywhere near as cheap as solar. In Ontario, Canada, 50% of all power comes from nuclear and costs CAD 0.12/kWh (USD 0.08/kWh); see Table 2: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2025... On the spectrum from "cheap" to expensive, where would that fall? For many years it was actu…

Now Ontario wants to double the electricity bills to finance its nuclear refurbs and new builds.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontario-utility-wants-to-double-...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#702

Post by frollogaston »

mpweiher wrote: post #642
frollogaston wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No technology is 100% safe, so that is a straw man. However, nuclear energy is the safest form of electricity generation we have.

"Solved problem" was what the parent comment said. Tell me instead that it's going to leak like everything else.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#703

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Gud wrote: post #667
tialaramex wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pow…

And now France target 2038 at the earliest for the first reactor in the EPR2 fleet. With a 11 cent per kWh CFD and interest free loans, summing to over 20 cents per kWh.

It is easy to dream about what could have been half a century ago, but that doesn’t change reality today.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#704

Post by [deleted] »

mpweiher wrote: post #416
bryanlarsen wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you put the cost of commissioning and decommissioning the reactor onto your taxpayers instead of including it in the cost of power, nuclear can be very cheap. I didn't try and translate the German ; but that's the trick Ontario Canada uses to false claim that nuclear power is cheap.

That turns out not to be the case. The prices are all-inclusive.

[deleted]

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#705

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

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.

Well. It is not cheap. Each new built large scale reactor needs tens of billions in subsidies. Money which could have multiple times larger effect, in a fraction of the time, if invested in renewables and storage.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#706

Post by nolist_policy »

mpweiher wrote: post #416
bryanlarsen wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you put the cost of commissioning and decommissioning the reactor onto your taxpayers instead of including it in the cost of power, nuclear can be very cheap. I didn't try and translate the German ; but that's the trick Ontario Canada uses to false claim that nuclear power is cheap.

That turns out not to be the case. The prices are all-inclusive.

Source?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#707

Post by lukan »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #694
lukan wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have people walk with radioactive material sealed in lead containers down some km into a mine and back up?

It's an absurd thought experiment to illustrate that even when taken to an extreme the volume is small enough that a solution broadly remains feasible.

No, it really does not seem feasible to me.

In germany alone, 500 000 m³ of radioactive material is to be disposed somehow by 2050. Having people carry that underground sounds insane. There is more to waste than fuel rods. And even they .. amount to a really high number if you factor in shielding.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#708

Post by Krasnol »

mpweiher wrote: post #653
Krasnol wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

It won't be "the least of our problems", it would be an additional problem.

The fuel and related will have to be monitored for 1000 years and more.

Yes, we know how geology works, which is why we have found a single place where it might be safe. ONE.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#709

Post by eqvinox »

rcbdev wrote: post #651
crote wrote: post #582

Earlier 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.

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...

> full compliance with the directive

I don't think I've ever seen a place fully compliant with all regulations down to the last letter. Somebody inevitably takes a shortcut somewhere. All you can do is push those shortcuts into places they don't matter.

Certainly not the times and culture we live in, but the "test" they tried running at Chornobyl violated their own regulations too…

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#710

Post by leonidasrup »

fakedang wrote: post #636
crote wrote: post #582

Earlier 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.

Hahaha, uninformed comment right here. Thorium-based nuclear research was practically shut down during the Cold War precisely because they realized that you can't make nuclear weaponry out of it. It would have been a very different world otherwise.

Thorium-based nuclear research was practically shut down because:

1. General decline of nuclear power plant building after 1970s in U.S. Why financing research for Thorium-based reactor, when even PWRs and BWRs are not build anymore. The shutdown of sodium-based reactor research is another example.

2. Handling of highly radioactive corrosive molten salts in Molten-salt reactor designs is a big issue. Materials resistant to both intensive chemical corrosion and neutron irradiation were open research problem.

3. Online reprocessing of nuclear fuel necessary for some thorium fuel cycle designs (inside the nuclear power plant) could increase the risk of nuclear proliferation. U.S. government, as a general policy, doesn't like when non-weapon states do nuclear reprocessing.

4. Thorium-based reactor could be used to produce weapon usable Uranium-233. But this production was not necessary, as military Plutonium production reactors were already build.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor#Fuel_repro...

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