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

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#801

Post by gambiting » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

RetroTechie wrote: post #754

gambiting wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again: >>highly radioactive material is within reach of any disgruntled office worker. Like, how would that disgruntled office worker even reach that highly radioactive material? Especially without killing themselves in the process. Hospitals already have extremely radioactive cobalt sources on premises, and they are 1) impossible to get to by a normal employee 2) would kill said employee if they ever did get to…

There can be a good bit of time between receiving a lethal dose of radiation, and dying (or incapacitated) from that. Also sources tend to come with shielding. Some portable, some less-portable. Oh and.. use machinery / robots / whatever, with operator outside the danger zone. Your "impossible" does a lot of heavy lifting here.

>> impossible to get to by a normal employee

No, it's the normal that does the heavy lifting. A radiation therapy machine does not allow for an easy removal of the source, not without hours of work with specialized machinery. Again, how does a disgruntled office worker do this without immediate attention of security?

>>There can be a good bit of time between receiving a lethal dose of radiation, and dying (or incapacitated) from that

Well, it's really unfortunate, but we have multiple reports from people who have accidentally walked into a room with an open Cesium source at various irradiation facilities - they all reported that they felt incredibly sick in less than a minute. And that's "just" an irradiation source, not an active nuclear reactor. Again, I'm struggling to imagine how a "disgruntled worker" gets anywhere near the actual radiactive material within it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#802

Post by bryanlarsen » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

throw0101c wrote: post #792

bryanlarsen wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Ontarian, I love CANDU. As an Ontarian, the thought of spending $500B on a couple of reactors makes me furious. Ontario is not going to become competitive again with the most expensive electricity in the world.

Ontario nuclear is cheaper than Ontario solar and wind (Table 2): * https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb... Until a few years ago it was cheaper than methane/natural gas: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023... At least when it comes to refurbishment, the independent (reports to provincial parliament) FAO found: > Overall, despite near-term Nuclear Price increases, th…

That's some impressive financial engineering to go from $500B for a few gigawatts of power to "reasonably priced".

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#803

Post by gpvos » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

gpvos wrote: post #427

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that light, the UK is still in the EU. I bet they would disagree though.

The UK is not enclosed by the EU.

To be pedantic: neither is Switzerland because of Liechtenstein...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#804

Post by Tuna-Fish » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #373

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solar and wind anticorrelate more than you think They anticorrelate in some locations. In others, they don't. Here in Finland in the winter you get effectively zero sun. We also get persistent stationary anticyclones. That means potentially over a month of temps in the -30°C region, and zero wind. Australia is extremely sunny. California is even better, they are modeling that assuming they keep their current hydro…

>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…

Last year, we had (depending on location) 0 to 25 hours of sunlight total in the entire month of December.

Low sun angle plus very heavy cloud cover means that even midday looks like a gloomy sunset.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#805

Post by coryrc » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #778

coryrc wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm asking why anyone else listened to them on this topic alone First, it wasn't this topic alone; whaling too. You also don't need 100% of people to listen. You just need to shift from 45% to 55%. If people were already skeptical about nuclear because they conflate nuclear weapons and nuclear power, then they only need to shift ~10% on the issue. And money gets their message out much stronger. > That had the doubl…

> And money gets their message out much stronger And yet you blame the messenger more than the money. If environmentalists didn't exist do you think fossil fuel wouldn't have found a different way to get the message out there? When money talks, people listen.

They weren't able to prevent solar, wind, and EV subsidies.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#806

Post by tialaramex » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

skew-aberration wrote: post #799

tialaramex wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 int…

I've never played fallout, and this isn't a game for me. I do have an electrical engineering degree, have read dozens of textbooks on (renewable) power generation, thermodynamics and manufacturing, and have spent significant time helping a research group with simulations of solar hybridised biomass gasification (mostly for Fischer Tropsch biofuels). The scale of electrification is huge, make no mistake, and we'll be…

> we'll be dependent on either nuclear or coal/gas for the next 50+ years.

No. Things change. To understand how stupid this model of the world is you need some historical perspective

In the UK for Q4 2000, twenty five year ago, there was 33.95TWh of electricity produced from coal power, Q4 2025 that was zero. All gone. In Q4 2000 wind and solar is making 0.25TWh, in Q4 2025 that was 30.72 TWh

So in half the time you're thinking about, the change was so enormous that the largest electrical generation sector disappeared and a once insignificant alternative took their place.

But OK, I can almost hear you, "Electricity is special". So lets look at another historical example to which I happen to have a connection.

In 1954, the SS Shieldhall was built for Glasgow, her main job was to take (treated) sewage and dump it into the ocean although she'd also have transported passengers (usually at low cost) because hey, why not. Shieldhall is a triple expansion oil fired steam ship, at the time she was a reasonable though slightly dated, design. Some of the aspects of her that make her desirable as a working museum piece today were deliberate (like I said passengers weren't her primary purpose but the buyers knew they existed) because they look cool, but a ship optimized for purpose in 1954 wouldn't have been that different, we don't have any because the restoration team could only afford one and this one is cool.

In 1985, so about 30 years later, Shieldhall was no longer economic and if not for a preservation trust which operates her today she'd have been scrapped and I wouldn't have mentioned her, but that's not fifty years it's just thirty and yet the entire notion of steamships went from "Obviously" to "This belongs in a museum" in that time.

At sea all the short distance stuff will be electrified because it just makes too much economic sense. What counts as "short" will gradually creep up, there are several electric ferries doing 30-40 minute hops today, it would be silly to imagine nobody is offering say a Channel crossing with batteries by 2050.

So then the question only comes up for the freighters. The crude carriers won't exist, if we're not digging up fossil fuels in order to burn them then they cease to be attractive for other purposes too, but both bulk carriers (e.g. moving cereals or ore) and container ships still make sense. The "luxury" cruise market also ceases to make sense though. For those bulk carriers with perishables aboard and for jet liners you would need synthetic fuel which will be expensive, but for everything else get used to going a lot slower to avoid needing fuel.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#807

Post by throw0101c » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #793

throw0101c wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ontario Hydro did not go bankrupt. It was broken up into "constituent" components in 1998, and the a lot of the nuclear plant construction financing debt didn't fit neatly into any one of them, so a separate legal entity was created: Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (OEFC). Ratepayers pay their electrical bills, the money goes to local utilities and entities like OPG and Hydro One, which in turn pay OEFC. Th…

It was a government owned utility, it couldn’t go bankrupt in the traditional sense since it has taxpayer backing. But its finances were completely underwater with no way out due to the debt from nuclear construction. After the breakup the public were left with $38B in debt from nuclear construction. Which the subsequent nuclear company was unable to pay off, or it would of course not have been restructured.

> But its finances were completely underwater with no way out due to the debt from nuclear construction.

The debt from nuclear construction was being paid off then, just like it is being paid off right now: OEFC holds the debt and has revenue to pay it off. An article from someone who is not a fan of nuclear, but is also not a fan of Harris's non-sense:

> Harris claimed Hydro was so badly in debt as to be bankrupt. This claim was proven false by the final Ontario Hydro financial report in March of 1999 which showed that $1 billion of Hydro’s debt had been paid down and was on track to be paid off in 20 years. At the time critics said: “wouldn’t we all like to have a 20-year mortgage on our home because then you have an asset that serves you well!”

* https://rabble.ca/environment/the-nuclear-power-lie/

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#808

Post by bjourne » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #551

bjourne wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a mischaracterization of what happened. The economics got bad because of regulatory pressures, and regulatory pressures increased because of anti-nuclear sentiment, and … … Anti-nuclear sentiment is directly downstream from organized campaigns by organizations like Greenpeace, yes, but also left-aligned political parties that, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, decided make killing nuclear their enti…

Plain false. The "economics" never got bad. They were always bad to begin with, hidden under layers of government subsidies.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#809

Post by throw0101c » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #802

throw0101c wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ontario nuclear is cheaper than Ontario solar and wind (Table 2): * https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb... Until a few years ago it was cheaper than methane/natural gas: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023... At least when it comes to refurbishment, the independent (reports to provincial parliament) FAO found: > Overall, despite near-term Nuclear Price increases, th…

That's some impressive financial engineering to go from $500B for a few gigawatts of power to "reasonably priced".

Can you provide a citation for the $500B? Because Carney has mentioned federal money in that amount for projects Canada-wide that include "energy" generally, but not nuclear specifically.

I did find this (potential?) $100B number on Ontario nuclear energy:

* https://archive.is/https://www.thestar.com/politics/provinci...

but if you take that number and 'ammortize' it over the average 40-year life span of reactors, it comes to $2.5B/year (in capex), which is about ~1% of the provincial budget. I'm not sure how much raw GW capacity that would add, or how many GWh would be generated annually, to do the math on the per-kWh (capex?) cost.

The article goes over the pros and cons of various points in the energy mix debate.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#810

Post by triceratops » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #805

triceratops wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And money gets their message out much stronger And yet you blame the messenger more than the money. If environmentalists didn't exist do you think fossil fuel wouldn't have found a different way to get the message out there? When money talks, people listen.

They weren't able to prevent solar, wind, and EV subsidies.

They're doing that this very moment in the US.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-administration...

And they've been working steadily against solar and wind the whole time.

This is just one example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra#Aftermath

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Prosperity#Fundi...

The fact that solar and wind are rolling out at unprecedented speed despite these headwinds is proof that its economics are better than nuclear, which could not overcome the same headwinds.