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Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

bluewin.ch

891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#891

The pro-nuclear propaganda in this discussion reminds me of the tobacco companies that claimed smoking was harmless, or of Monsanto, which insisted that its pesticides were safe, and so on. It is always the same pattern: obvious facts are denied, doubts are exaggerated, legitimate concerns are downplayed, and blatant lies are spread. I wonder how many undercover lobbyists for the nuclear industry are active here on H…

Fascinating how ppl mention pro nuclear propaganda when we already know the facts. France and Sweden have among the lowest emissions in EU and got them in 90's by building both ren and nuclear. Germany built only ren, DK built only ren and both have far worse emissions.

The antinuclear lobby in Germany achieved a wonderful feat https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#892
post #8

Switzerland, Norway and Austria are probably the country that needs nuclear the less, but anything to start the discussion in other European countries is good. Probably not economically viable in Switzerland though.

Norway already wants to build nuclear. Austria still has worse emissions vs France/Sweden despite much more hydro...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#893
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. As a. swiss voter, this is close to my heart. 50% of all energy in the swiss economy is oil / gas. Of the remaining 50% (electricity), 2/3 are generated by hydro. The remaining ~1/3 by nuclear fission. Swiss electricity prices are sky-high, and the demand for electricity is going to continue to rise. To remain a competitive industrial economy, to transition away from oil/gas, and to offset any potentia…

Why hasn't Switzerland deployed solar/wind? That seems like a pretty big miss in general. The Swiss grid has almost no wind which is strange for such a mountainous nation. And solar is also quite low which is also strange given how much empty land exists in Switzerland along with it's relatively low latitude.

nimby to have solar/wind in alps is even higher vs nimby against nuclear. With nuclear you can at least throw another unit in Aarau

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#894
post #51
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. As a. swiss voter, this is close to my heart. 50% of all energy in the swiss economy is oil / gas. Of the remaining 50% (electricity), 2/3 are generated by hydro. The remaining ~1/3 by nuclear fission. Swiss electricity prices are sky-high, and the demand for electricity is going to continue to rise. To remain a competitive industrial economy, to transition away from oil/gas, and to offset any potentia…

Like I said in another comment: nuclear only makes sense if you build it at scale, because you need very specific skills and knowledge that is hard to get to build it securely, on time and cheap. Ideally you would have one company/conglomerate that would get one plant off the ground per year across the EU, but currently that isn't possible.

you subcontractit instead of building yourself. It's not like Switzerland is building all it's trains

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#895
post #305
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. As a. swiss voter, this is close to my heart. 50% of all energy in the swiss economy is oil / gas. Of the remaining 50% (electricity), 2/3 are generated by hydro. The remaining ~1/3 by nuclear fission. Swiss electricity prices are sky-high, and the demand for electricity is going to continue to rise. To remain a competitive industrial economy, to transition away from oil/gas, and to offset any potentia…

I will probably vote in favor of nuclear, but you have to admit that us not having any uranium and having huge solar and pumped hydro potential up in the alps makes Switzerland pretty bad match for nuclear. Still much better than gas though…

Nuclear requires least amount of materials so you can stockpile uranium for a decade and be fine

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#896
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a lftr enthusiast, but everyone needs to keep in mind that fission is just fundamentally economically non-competitive compared to solar and wind. We're talking about a world were oil is going away. Switzerland is already using as much hydro as it can. Nuclear is not about replacing hydro, it's about replacing as much as it can of oil. Even with as much nuclear, hydro, wind and solar as they can, we as a society…

Build a solar plant in the Sahara desert and ship the energy long range, Nuclear's probably still more expensive than that. I'm not saying we give up on nuclear entirely. It should be at the well-funded research and prototyping phase for another 10 years. In my opinion, at least for consumer energy, I think perovskite solar cells and sodium ion batteries for home storage will enable a very large oversupply or overcap…

lol you think power from Africa is strategically safer dependency? And no, nuclear will be miles cheaper considering infra cost of sending power from Africa

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#897
post #65
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With little land usable for solar and wind I was thinking that Switzerland and Austria would need it more Edit: Not Norway - Doh!

Norwegian here. - We have a lot of hydro, that are very cheap to produces and for some of the power plants we fill up water by using solar and wind when that is very cheap and generate power back when it's demand for it (meaning selling it expensive) -Norway export more then we are importing. But that could shift in the coming years. -Nuclear power are expensive, so with the current prices it do not make sense to hav…

Imo Norway will have it https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/assessment-of-pr...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can always sell the electricity

It's far too expensive for that with how cheap renewables are making electricity. France is already struggling with that.

France is largest net exporter in EU and made about 5.4bn revenue last year from this export. It plans to build datacenters to increase profits further

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint, being snarky on HN is not as cool as you think. Nuclear "became expensive" because state subsidies declined, labor costs increased, and environmental regulations across all industries tightened.

this is nonsense. Take german plants - zero subsidies for operation, plants were built mostly by private sector. In France - no CFD's for existing units, plants were constructed by govt for about 150bn. In comparison Germany spent on EEG subsidies double of that and you can see the result in emissions...

Really? Which private sector built nuclear power plants in East Germany? In West Germany most plants were constructed by state-controlled enterprises and there were no expectation of them to ever reach profitability.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#900

I'm amazed that the main debate on how clean or dangerous nuclear energy is still circles around the plants themselves and storage of spent energy. I believe that glaring oversight here is that enriched nuclear fuel doesn't grow on trees. Somehow no one ever seems to talk about how efficient and clean the mining of these rare earths is and in which countries that happens. Nuclear being a clean energy is a myth as far…

For the storage, check Onkalo for example

Enriched fuel can be gotten from Urenco/Orano or you can build Candu units otherwise. Over half of global uranium mining is already in situ (with several exceptions, Canada among them for good reasons) which is more or less ok enviromentally. Especially considering nuclear requires least amount of mining vs alternatives per kwh. "Nuclear being a clean energy is a myth as far as I know" - then you should inform yourself better. You can start for example with UNECE report https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20...

Trying to say nuclear mining is as bad as coal without even trying to inform yourself about the topic is fascinating

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