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

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#731

Post by palata » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #610

Matumio wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Fortunately people usually have enough common sense to see how ridiculous that one is

The problem is actually that people don't have enough attention to actually read about it. People are stuck in "I am a smart adult, I don't have to think, whatever I believe is right".

Those are actual problems and wind turbines actually deploy mitigations for them. Possible for birds, not for bats. Many endangered bats are killed as a result.

Sure, as compared to not giving a shit about the living condition of, say, billions of chickens, it may sound like it doesn't matter. But not everybody wants to live on a lifeless planet surrounded by the worst species ever (I mean humans).

> It's almost as bad as the "wind turbines cause cancer" BS.

If you genuinely believe it is, then you vastly overestimate your common sense.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#732

Post by palata » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

crote wrote: post #530

palata wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not that's the case, the problem is that if you put together all the nuclear, solar, wind and hydro we can manage, we will still have less energy than what we get easily with oil. I don't get why they even compete against each other: we need as much as we can of everything that we can.

You can only spend a dollar once, so any money going into nuclear won't go into solar, wind, or hydro - which have far better payoff when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions.

And in terms of sovereignty? Most solar panels come from China, don't they?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#733

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 9:59 AM UTC

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.

Venezuela was. North Korea doesn't seem to be. Nukes are one of the differences between the two nations.

Iran was literally attacked and bombed. Seriously doubt that would have happened if they had nukes.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#734

Post by p2detar » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #728

Arodex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the comments?

Yes. Have you? Are you of the opinion that the comments on that article are conclusive evidence for all SMR startups failing? If so, how? Please try to be specific. I don't see evidence of even one startup failing there, never mind all of them.

Not only that, but the landscape of SMRs research and development is becoming very rich [0]. I think we are going to see a renaissance of reactor technology in the coming decade, and it will be well deserved.

0 - https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-power-...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#735

Post by tcfhgj » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:04 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #465

tcfhgj wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not so cheap anymore when you want to add lot's of storage capacity

That's exactly when pumped hydro shines. Increasing the storage reservoir capacity is cheap. It's the turbines and infrastructure that's expensive, but that doesn't change if you're only increasing the capacity.

All the cheap storage reservoir capacity is already used - from where are you going to get more?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#736

Post by esarbe » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:05 AM UTC

fc417fc802 wrote: post #492

esarbe wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes - "the evil environmentalists." Congratulations, you really torched that straw man. We stopped building nuclear reactors in the early 1970ies[0], long before there was any large organized civil movement organizing against it - because with the required additional complexity to make them safe, the technology was just too expensive. (As always - it's the capitalists that messed things up, not civil society.) De…

I'm not sure I agree but lets set that aside for now. Are you seriously suggesting that $50 billion per France equivalent over half a century would have been an unreasonable price to pay to avert climate change? It's just not a logically consistent or even remotely sensible position. The environmentalist movement undeniably got this one wrong and I say that as someone with views that would generally be categorized as…

These €50 billion is just what EDF is in debt, not what building and operating these reactors actually cost. Just in the next 10 years EDF will have in invest about €150-200 billion to replace and refurbish their reactors. That's just to keep the current capacity, not to expand it.

Unfortunately "the environmentalist movement" didn't have the information regarding the dangers of climate change and the information about the near-zero threat from low level nuclear radiation in 1970ies. Hindsight is 20/20.

That said; planning and construction of new nuclear reactors peaked in the early 1970ies, before large scale accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) really mobilized civil society against nuclear power.

The reason the West stopped building is because even with state support, it's not such a financially attractive investment. That's why "the East" continued building more and more reactors until the big incident. (Arguably their reactors were also much less safe and thus probably cheaper by quite a bit.)

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#737

Post by tialaramex » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:46 AM UTC

skew-aberration wrote: post #657

tialaramex wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's weird for somebody who says they want nuclear power to bring this up - have you been playing too much Fallout ?

The two big non-electrical energy demands are transport and heating, which not only are being electrified already, they're also places where electrification is a net energy win, so that diesel or natural gas power translates into less than half as much electricity for the same results.

For heat it just comes down to heat pumps, since we don't actually want to make more heat we can instead move the heat that already exists and avoid that high price, easy with electricity, impractical otherwise.

But for transport it's even more fundamental, efficient fossil fuel power is about scale and regularity, but for transport you want tiny engines and bursty usage. A transition shrinks the overall energy budget while improving the outcomes, that's why this is such an obvious economic step.

> 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

The vast majority of UK consumers do not have a wholesale tracked price for electricity, so in fact that lower immediate wholesale price is just profits for the retail electricity companies.

Long term price trends matter more, but notice the CfD strike price for the new nuclear power station in the UK was a lot higher (IIRC) £92.50. If, of course, that station ever supplies actual power. So whether the headline price is £60 or £600, the price actually paid was £92.50 and somehow or another that's what you're paying for that electricity even if you were told it was £60.

£92.50 isn't bad for a novel technology. If you were going to deploy it next year and in five years you'd be bidding £80 or less for another new plant I'd have enthusiasm for this concept. But in fact you're going to come back in five years, still without a finished plant but now pitching for £110 per MWh instead of £92.50 -- we have seen this story before.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#738

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:50 AM UTC

dark-star wrote: post #454

TheCondor wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did waste management become a solved problem? In Colorado they shut down their last reactor (a very modern, at the time, thorium unit) in 1989 and there is still tons of waste product onsite since Yucca mountain was the designated target for it and it never came online. It's in a river basin and the containment facility is supposedly insanely robust (can withstand 300mph winds, etc..) but it's still there and I think…

Newer reactors produce much less long-lasting waste. A half-life of only 100 or 200 years makes a tremendous difference to the old reactors where half-life was measured in 1000s of years

Mythical Gen IV reactors? Without even existing prototypes?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#739

Post by Arodex » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 11:05 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #728

Arodex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the comments?

Yes. Have you? Are you of the opinion that the comments on that article are conclusive evidence for all SMR startups failing? If so, how? Please try to be specific. I don't see evidence of even one startup failing there, never mind all of them.

[flagged]

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#740

Post by Arodex » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 11:14 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #728

Arodex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the comments?

Yes. Have you? Are you of the opinion that the comments on that article are conclusive evidence for all SMR startups failing? If so, how? Please try to be specific. I don't see evidence of even one startup failing there, never mind all of them.

>Please try to be specific.

https://www.rechargenews.com/analysis/smrs-v-renewables-mini...

"What about the costs, both in terms of Capex to build them and the levelised cost of the power they produce?

Gadomski said: “We are very suspect of projections of costs from companies because they're inclined to be more favourable, as opposed to being more realistic. I think that getting a good cost estimate is something that is not possible right now because we haven't built any.”"

>I don't see evidence of even one startup failing there

"SMR developers will all want to avoid the fate of NuScale, the sector trailblazer that saw a pioneering US power deal cancelled when its estimated LCOE soared to $89/MWh from a previous $58/MWh."

Just a 100% cost mistake. Oops.

And even if they could have reached their 58$/MWh target, let's see what is the cost of competition...

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/05/06/firm-solar-and-storag...

"Firm wind-plus-storage costs in 2025 ranged from around $59/MWh in Inner Mongolia to $88/MWh to $94/MWh across Brazil, Germany, and Australia, with costs projected to fall to roughly $49/MWh to $75/MWh across those markets by 2030."

Oops oops.

"Construction timelines are also shortening, with projects typically built within one to two years of securing permits and grid connection."

Oops oops oops.

Renewable is running circles around nuclear. Every renewable technology is beating forecast. Every nuclear technology is breaking costs predictions and deadlines.