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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

#761

Post by UltraSane »

inigyou wrote: post #759
esarbe wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reactor has yet even reached the operating age of 60 years. That 80 years number is wholly speculative. We stopped building nuclear reactors in the 1970ies[0] because with the additional complexity to make them safe, the systems were just too expensive. It has nothing to do with "relentless irrational opposition". [0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

The American regime has recently solved this problem by removing safety requirements - they have de-recognized the linear no-threshold model of radiation damage, which means the official fact is that there is a threshold of radiation that's safe to receive. That threshold is, of course, just above whatever one of the nuclear reactors they're about to build will emit. They removed the "as low as reasonably possible" d…

The linear no threshold model is not supported by actual evidence. More accurate models include

Linear-Quadratic (LQ) Model

Threshold Model

Hormesis model

The linear no-threshold model is less realistic than threshold or hormesis-based models: An evolutionary perspective

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000927971...

"They removed the "as low as reasonably possible" design goal which means it's now allowed to dump radioactive waste into a river to save money"

This is just an incredibly stupid lie that completely destroys your credibility.

The ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) principle paired with hyper-sensitive detection technology requires nuclear operators to spend billions on redundant safety features and extensive permitting for infinitesimal health benefits. This regulatory burden prices nuclear energy out of the market.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#763

Post by UltraSane »

esarbe wrote: post #221
UltraSane wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear reactors can last up to 80 years. The main reason nuclear hasn't displaced fossil fuels over the last 70 years is due to relentless irrational opposition.

No reactor has yet even reached the operating age of 60 years. That 80 years number is wholly speculative. We stopped building nuclear reactors in the 1970ies[0] because with the additional complexity to make them safe, the systems were just too expensive. It has nothing to do with "relentless irrational opposition". [0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

Georgia nuclear power plant cleared for 80-year operating life

https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/georgia-nuclear-powe...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#764

Post by pintxo »

coryrc wrote: post #482
Danox wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany shouldn’t have dismantled those nuclear power plants dumb…

Just a couple years before the first invasion of Ukraine. Wouldn't it have been nice in 2022 when the Nordstream pipelines stopped?

AFAIK Germany got the majority of the fissile fuel from Russia..

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#765

Post by bryanlarsen »

eldaisfish wrote: post #537
bryanlarsen wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you want to hazard a guess as to why? Because it was only in 2025 that batteries became cheaper than coal, so the lead times involved mean they are still building coal. They're very rapidly ramping up battery bank installation, it's too early to tell if they're also ramping down coal plant installations, but it seems likely.

china has confirmed building new coal plants until at least 2030.

And it's still building nuclear plants a decade after it decided to concentrate on solar + coal. Plans have lead times and inertia, and China doesn't want to put all of it's eggs in one basket. They'll keep building coal and nuclear at a low rate for a long time to ensure they never lose the core knowledge on how to build them so they're always available as an option.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#766

Post by bryanlarsen »

eldaisfish wrote: post #541
bryanlarsen wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per Ember Energy reports, a cost optimal new build grid is between 90% - 97% solar/wind/battery, and between 3% to 10% gas peaker depending on how much sun/wind your locale gets. But you can't replace the gas peaker with 3% or 10% nuclear because in essence that gas peaker is supplying 100% of the power 3% to 10% of the time. So you'd have to build nuclear plants that can supply 100% of the power. But once you have t…

every single one of Ember's analyses are based on historical situations. That is certainly useful, and serves to demonstrate an important point - that wind and solar make economic sense. There is not a single analysis out there that tackles the twin problems of meeting growing electricity demand with a power source that depends on an uncertain and changing climate. You say "occasional" dunkelflaute, but we have no id…

> You say "occasional" dunkelflaute, but we have no idea whether occasional is once a season or once a decade.

Yes, these are things we know with a high degree of statistical confidence. Many locations have hundreds of years of hourly weather records.

We know that Europe has never had an hour where there wasn't significant sun or significant wind somewhere on the continent any hour in the past 30+ years. The same can be said for North America, and Asia.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#767

Post by throw0101c »

aeturnum wrote: post #566
throw0101c wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find this to be the most frustrating aspect of the nuclear discourse. The "waste problem" is technically solved (we believe, gotta wait ~10k years to know) It's not a 10k year problem, it's a ~300 year problem, after which most of it is at the same level as natural uranium ore; and the stuff that isn't can be blocked via aluminium foil (to stop beta particles). The first 10-20 years post-removal are the most dang…

That's fair and I'll admit to using a bit of hyperbole with that number. My point is that we are designing solutions for time scales we haven't actually been able to test over and while we have every reason to believe our solutions will work - they might not.

> My point is that we are designing solutions for time scales we haven't actually been able to test over and while we have every reason to believe our solutions will work - they might not.

The design life spans of bridges are 50-75, with some going towards 75-150. But once a bridge is EOL, the need for it doesn't just go away: it needs to be replaced. And in the intervening years it needs to be maintained.

So we have finite-but-overlapping life spans of infrastructure with the implicit assumption that society/civilization will continue on existing to deal with repair, renewal, and updating said infrastructure. Used-fuel storage is no different.

And if you want to reduce the total volume, spend money on reprocessing (which is currently more expensive than digging new fuel out of the ground; only France makes an effort to do this).

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#768

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

throw0101c wrote: post #755
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Ontario's Financial Accountability Office, which reports to provincial parliament and is independent of the government, concluded that at least for the refurbs: > * The FAO estimates that the Plan will result in nuclear generation supplying a significant proportion of Ontario electricity demand from 2016 to 2064 at an average price of $80.7/MWh in 2017 dollars. (For reference, the 2017 Nuclear Price is $69/MWh and th…

Last time Ontario built CANDU’s the utility went into bankruptcy and the taxpayers still haven’t paid off that debt.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#769

Post by cm2187 »

crote wrote: post #521
cm2187 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it can. Nuclear is cheap at scale, not when you build a single prototype every 20 years. You need large countries with large programmes to be successful.

> Nuclear is cheap at scale Citation needed. We saw at-scale buildout during the 1970s and 1980, did it result in result in order-of-magnitude cost reductions back then?

VS the cost today yes. Nuclear wasn’t seen as a prohibitively expensive form of energy, quite the opposite. South korea and China are making it work. But if you build a new prototype every time and get bogged down in decades of environmental surveys, lawsuits and ever changing over regulations, any infrastructure project becomes prohibitive, whether it is nuclear, high speed rail, or anything else.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#770

Post by cm2187 »

Danox wrote: post #488
cm2187 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it can. Nuclear is cheap at scale, not when you build a single prototype every 20 years. You need large countries with large programmes to be successful.

It doesn’t take 20 years to build. Are we in the west gonna wait for the Chinese to build out Thorium Reactors, are we also gonna wait for high-speed rail to be built out by the Chinese too if it wasn’t for the war with Russia and the Ukraine, the Chinese probably would have built out high-speed rail, all all the way to Europe, by the way, they’ve already built a rail system all the way to Tehran. And the Chinese hav…

There are some european success stories in high speed rail too (France). China doesn’t let itself entangled in planning restrictions. US and European countries love over regulation and litigations. That’s a choice, and it comes with a steep cost.
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