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

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#881

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:14 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #159

mpweiher wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That competition is handily won by wind and solar. In the meantime in Switzerland: "Our cheapest electricity product is nuclear electricity." https://ewr.ch/elektrizitaet/stromprodukte/

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.

The cost is included why ppl keep repeating this nonsense https://www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#882

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:15 AM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #155

mpweiher wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That competition is handily won by wind and solar. In the meantime in Switzerland: "Our cheapest electricity product is nuclear electricity." https://ewr.ch/elektrizitaet/stromprodukte/

Existing nuclear power plants can be very cheap at $30 – $40 / MWh New nuclear power plants would be much more expensive at $180 / MWh or more, due to strict modern regulations. Even with these regulations, there is no nuclear plant that is safe against a terrorist crashing an airplane into it. The unsolved permanent repository problem is left to future generations. Finally, building a new nuclear power plant will ea…

not regulations - supply chain. Many french reactors are modernized even with core catchers. Power is still cheap. Repository isn't a problem either. Switzerland needs one anyway and Terradura will slowly advance just like Onkalo

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#883

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:16 AM UTC

gib444 wrote: post #271

bryanlarsen wrote: post #14

It's a world-wide competition to generate the most expensive electricity! The record is currently held by Vogtle in Georgia US, but Ontario Canada is trying to take the crown by spending $500B on nuclear.

UK is trying really hard with its reactors too. Sizewell C, its £38bn current price tag is looking very very shaky - £60bn final cost wouldn't surprise me. And our electricity bills are going up again in order to help fund it. Lovely

Most of UK's bills are up due to gas. Nuclear is a drop in a pond there

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#884

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:16 AM UTC

Moldoteck wrote: post #862

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, EPR2 is overcomplicated mess. But the subsidy is not that great either... considering many EU countries are subsidizing biomass today at 18ct/kwh...

Always the false comparisons.

Please do tell me the expected capacity factor of these biomass plants, even if 18 cents per kWh is correct, after renewables, storage, hydro if available and existing nuclear plants with 80 year LTOs do the heavy lifting.

Can you see the difference compared to new built nuclear power which requires that absolutely insane price when running at 100% 24/7 for 40 years?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#885

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:17 AM UTC

Arodex wrote: post #22

reddalo wrote: post #5

I wish Italy did the same. We still have to deal with the consequences of a referendum hold not so long after che Chernobyl accident which made it illegal to build and operate nuclear power plants.

It is absolutely ridiculous: of all countries, Italy has totally the means to rely only on solar and batteries. You even have the industrial prowess to make it all in the country step by step, whereas nuclear reactors are such humongous engineering projects that building the capacity is very out of reach. Edit: and with the Mediterranean and rivers warming severely - and the latter even suffering from draught - how a…

Italy has much less hydro vs Spain, no access to cheap gas and no cheap nuclear. Building nuclear in parallel with ren is a must.

Cooling is never a problem. You design the plants properly, see Palo Verde. But for Italy cooling towers are enough

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#886

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:17 AM UTC

Perseids wrote: post #248

flextheruler wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar, wind, and even hydroelectricity are too dependent upon the environment to make up the entire electricity generation capacity of any major industrial country. With renewables, even with batteries, the actual production is within a range. Couple that with demand also being in a range you get uncomfortable possibilities at play. And while colder water is definitely preferable for cooling, I'd have to imagine that…

The limit is not how cold the water needs to be for the power plant, but how hot it can be for the river ecology to not take (too much) damage. Even in Germany power plants regularly need to be shut down. > 2022 was another consecutive year in which water levels of major European rivers – such as the Rhine, the Danube, and the Rhône – were dangerously low and the water temperatures very high. This caused severe probl…

It was mostly for units without cooling towers. Nowadays inland units have them included

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#887

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:18 AM UTC

GL26 wrote: post #19

Nuclear energy is really the energy of the future, fission still has bright days ahead of it. the startup market for SMRs is going to boom once the core challenges will have been solved, sure that we will see many ETH founders go into that world

SMR's are just a hype machine - economics are worse than LMR's. Look at Canadian BWRX for example...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#888

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:19 AM UTC

croes wrote: post #274

GL26 wrote: post #19

Nuclear energy is really the energy of the future, fission still has bright days ahead of it. the startup market for SMRs is going to boom once the core challenges will have been solved, sure that we will see many ETH founders go into that world

Nuclear energy is still turning water to steam, no really future like. Turning sun light to electricity on the other hand is more that

water to steam is a wonderful invention

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#889

Post by Moldoteck » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:20 AM UTC

LinXitoW wrote: post #332

UltraSane wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWRs are not really that complicated. They are just very hot metal rods inside a thick steel pressure vessel that boil water to make steam. "Nuclear has had its moment. That moment is gone." When CO2 caused climate changed is posed to be civilization altering this is a very very foolish thing to say.

That's a foolish thing to say because building enough nuclear, even with the fairy tale prices and times people make up, would take soooo much longer and cost sooo much more than green energy. Even more importantly, it's very hard to compromise and downscale a project when the inevitable fossil fuel lobbyists vote against you. It's a lot easier to half a solar park project than a nuclear project.

Ironically, France and Sweden got some of the fastest decarbonizations on the planet when nuclear plans got decided.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#890

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:20 AM UTC

Moldoteck wrote: post #865

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But ren also require gas firming expansion(see germany). And Germany spends in ren subsidies about equivalent of 1 failed french nuclear project, each year... to have far worse emissions

Always the laser focus on Germany.

Are you suggesting that Germany would be better off by keeping their current emissions until the mid ~2040s waiting for horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power to come online?

Who cares if the emergency reserves are fossil gas when we still need to decarbonize agriculture, construction, aviation, industry, maritime shipping and so on?

When those emergency reserve emissions matter on the scale of the entire economy then force them to be zero carbon fuel, if still necessary.

You’re trying to blow up potential what if’s 15 years from now as the end of the world.

Followed by looking backwards. What you are complaining about is that 2010 solar was expensive and still get paid that expensive price.

What’s the relevance when it comes to choosing what the most efficient spending of money is in 2026?