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

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#851

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:32 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #253

sharpneli wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro has a natural limit. After you have put a dam to every river that’s it. And the Swiss aint far from that. There are also cloudy days without much wind, and those are quite harsh during winter. What should one do then? Just shut everything down?

Solar produces power even on cloudy days. So the simple answer is you overbuild solar to produce enough power even on cloudy days. That requires about a 10x overbuild. In reality you do about a 3x overbuild, exporting to the cloudy places in the rest of Europe when you are cloudy and importing from the sunny places when you are cloudy. It's sometimes cloudy in most of Europe but it's never cloudy in all of Europe. Th…

it'll still not work if you bothered to look at energy charts data for Europe. Plenty of 3+days of low capacity factor for solar+wind. No amount of realistic oversupply will save you there. "Wind and solar are anti-correlated." - just weakly, if you zoom in at hourly/minute production situation is different. New nuclear makes sense if you hate gas.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#852

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:33 AM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #425

bilekas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though. The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days. It a real shame to leave it all on the table because of poorly designed and managed disasters.

Do you trust that any of today's politicians will not be poor at nuclear reactor design and management?

politicians dont manage nor design reactors. With all it's flaws nuclear is one of the safest sources of power

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#853

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:34 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #820

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…

Your documents are from 2017. The numbers for solar will be almost an order of magnitude wrong.

not in case of CFD's

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#854

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:35 AM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #795

mjmas wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but they aren't the ones designing them. Politicians normally aren't engineers.

Do you trust today's politicians to hire competent engineers? Do you trust today's politicians to provide all the money the engineers ask for? Besides an engineering problem, they are also a political problem for as long as they exist, and even longer. Remember how Russia bombed Chernobyl in the Ukraine war?

they dont hire engineers either. Those are hired by companies that design/build reactors. How many died from Chernobyl bombing in Ukraine?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#855

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:36 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #776

throw0101c wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you mean unbelievably expensive and takes an eternity to build outside of China and Korea. Japan was able to start construction on a new nuclear reactor and have its construction (and start commercial service) with-in five years, and did so every year from the mid-1980s to the early-2000s: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea... The first unit you build will be expensive, the secon…

The 5 years of construction is the fast part. How many years of planning and permits did it take before they broke ground?

not that many either if the design is sufficiently flexible. That's how japan spewed several ABWR's so fast

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#856

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:38 AM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #152

bilekas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though. The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days. It a real shame to leave it all on the table because of poorly designed and managed disasters.

It's also incredibly expensive and brittle and cannot be moderated without additional costs[1]. At this point nuclear is just a dead horse. It hasn't managed to displace fossil fuels in over 70 years - a feat that renewables have done within 20 years. Nuclear is too slow and too expensive. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/france...

Nuclear managed to make France and Sweden cleanest grids in EU as late as 90's while Germany is still one of the worst emitters in EU with ren-only approach and plans gas expansion fro firming. Yes, tell us more about who did better

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#857

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:40 AM UTC

tfourb wrote: post #711

throw0101c wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> In Ontario, Canada, 50% of all power comes from nuclear and costs CAD 0.12/kWh (USD 0.08/kWh); see Table 2: The website does not open for me. Are the quoted prices consumer prices including tax or wholesale prices before tax? If it’s the latter, 8 cents is not that cheap and comparable to the average price per kWh (all sources) in Germany. In most cases in most places, the lion’s share of electricity costs is tax a…

Germany spends 10x more than france on transmission precisely because of ren expansion. Curtailment payments are much higher too. So you are right that taxes are different - depending on your pathway, you have no choice. Germany has highest household prices in EU after ireland despite 18bn/y in EEG subsidies to lower them.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#858

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:41 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #779

throw0101c wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

That's because the utility went bankrupt and its construction costs were absorbed onto the public debt. Nuclear is cheap to operate. It's expensive to build and expensive to decommission. Any analysis that doesn't include those two costs is highly misleading.

decomission is cheap too. All german plants are decom with operator money except soviet/experimental units. There are price breakdowns if you wish for opex https://www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#859

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:42 AM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #502

MoonWalk wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said it would be as cheap as solar. But "renewables" can't fulfill ALL power needs ALL the time. When you actually need to generate electricity rather than gather it, what's better than nuclear?

Renewables don't need to fulfill everything all the time. If they need assistance from fossil fuels 10% of the time, that's a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. The last 10% won't be the biggest issue to deal with. So you can build expensive nuclear plants for that small fraction of the time, or you can continue to use existing fossil fuel plants for free. The difference to the carbon bottom line is small.

"Renewables don't need to fulfill everything all the time. If they need assistance from fossil fuels 10% of the time, that's a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. The last 10% won't be the biggest issue to deal with." - so funny seeing environmentalists accepting parallel gas infrastructure when countries like France/Sweden don't have it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#860

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

frm88 wrote: post #696

rayiner wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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. France went 75% nuclear in the 1980s. If we had built all those nuclear plants back in the 1980s when France did, they would be fully depreciated by now. And we'd be having this conversation about "cheap solar" in a far more favorable position where we had avoided h…

This is so shortsighted. We'd still have the nuclear waste problem and - more importantly - the cost. Germany alone is facing a bill of €26B to €45B for nuclear waste management, decomissioning and cleanup. All of that goes into your electricity bill, because the government pays only 25% of it: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/nuclear-clean-cos...

nuclear waste is not a problem. It can be made a problem if the chiefs responsible for it (BASE?BMUV) have certain political affiliation...

All german plants are decomissioned through operators money except soviet/experimental units. Operators also paid into KENFO, an autoinvesting fund about 24bn and it keeps it's value despite the state taking about 2bn/y from it for interim storage and 'searching'. Meanwhile Finland built Onkalo for 1bn...