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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

#931

Post by Moldoteck »

bjourne wrote: post #899
Moldoteck wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it wasn't fully state controlled enterprises in the west - state was a partial owner. For example PreussenElektra, when it built plants was a publicly traded company and during Grohnde state mostly divested from it. Plants not only reached profitability but were cheapest firm power in german merit order bringing huge profits to the owners

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#932

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Moldoteck wrote: post #930
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why only 40y for new nuclear? When min license is 60 for gen3 and many gen2 already got extensions to 80y. And where did you get the 100% 24/7 number? The min profitability of FLA3 doesnt assume that. And that's for an ultimately failed project which could have been much better if not EDF incompetence

You do realize that trying to smear the costs across almost 100 years is an admission in how horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power is?

And you do realize that across such a lifespan essentially the entire nuclear plant except the pressure vessel and outer shell is replaced?

Steam generators, turbines, generators, control systems, piping, valves etc. Everything is replaced. Is that free?

There’s no trouble building renewables with similar lifespans. It is just not done because predicting profitability until the 2100 is absolute lunacy.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#933

Post by YetAnotherNick »

Moldoteck wrote: post #879
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tracked down the source once and almost all of the fossil fuel deaths boiled down to deaths due to particulate matter in developing countries. It is highly preventible and only occurs because of no oversight or corruption. If we scale nuclear and have profit maximisation as objective and have no standards in factory, it will have significantly worse fate.

Didn't know Germany is a developing country https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z

Germany gets pollution from all around due to bad coal, just like they got deaths due to Chernobyl.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#934

Post by Moldoteck »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #932
Moldoteck wrote: post #930

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why only 40y for new nuclear? When min license is 60 for gen3 and many gen2 already got extensions to 80y. And where did you get the 100% 24/7 number? The min profitability of FLA3 doesnt assume that. And that's for an ultimately failed project which could have been much better if not EDF incompetence

You do realize that trying to smear the costs across almost 100 years is an admission in how horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power is? And you do realize that across such a lifespan essentially the entire nuclear plant except the pressure vessel and outer shell is replaced? Steam generators, turbines, generators, control systems, piping, valves etc. Everything is replaced. Is that free? There’s no trouble bu…

It's an admission that the plant can operate for a long time

"do realize that across such a lifespan essentially the entire nuclear plant except the pressure vessel and outer shell is replaced?" - so you are saying that EDF replaced/will replace all the components except PV of it's plants to reach 60-80y? This sounds ridiculous. Maintenance isn't free but is part of opex of a plant which for existing ones is rather low.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#935

Post by Kon5ole »

Moldoteck wrote: post #877
Kon5ole wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Has the lowest deaths/TWH One should also keep in mind that it has the highest potential deaths per TWh.

still no. Highest is from coal. Entire chernobyl deaths are expected to be about 4k per old UN estimations or much less per recent UNSCEAR reports. That's for decades span. And Chernobyl was a design that the west wouldn't even allow back then... Now check coal...

Actual Chernobyl deaths is not a measure of potential deaths. It's the same flawed argument in different clothing. It assumes that what has happened is the worst that could happen, but it's not.

Chernobyl was not a worst case scenario.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#936

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Moldoteck wrote: post #929
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

Germany is just a prime example. Germany was better off to not shut down existing plants and invest in ren+nuclear to retire leftover fossils. It's also fascinating to hear the "horrifyingly expensive" statement. Germany spends on EEG equivalent of one failed french nuclear project each year. It also spends the same on transmission to acomodate distributed generation. And also plans to expand gas. Anyone suggesting G…

Why are you unable to look forward? I see a wall of text complaining about the past.

Again. 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?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#937

Post by dalyons »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #815
dalyons wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If solar and wind can be made profitable, I don't see how nuclear is any different. Nuclear is fundamentally way more complicated than wind and especially solar. Nuclear is 10s of kilometers of high pressure piping, 1000s of tons of concrete, exotic pressure welding. Solar on the other hand is brain dead simple and amenable to mass production in a way that nuclear can never be. As such, nuclear will never see the s…

We also used to say that solar and wind were fundamentally flawed: solar panels had an exotic manufacturing process, energy storage was limited and expensive, they are fundamentally tied to specific environmental conditions which may not hold, etc. We still managed. Likewise, we could see cost reductions with cheaper/better alternatives to concrete, models that don't require so much piping, the exotic pressure weldin…

I absolutely agree we could see cost reductions with scale. Maybe 2x ? But solar is a much more simple manufacturing process that’s amenable to massive massive volume. Print silicon, add traces, assemble. 100% automated. As such it has seen a 20x cost reduction since 1994. Nukes will never be able to touch that reduction.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#938

Post by Kon5ole »

Moldoteck wrote: post #920
Kon5ole wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same frustration but for the opposite reason. I am entirely confident you must be misinformed, not me. I suggest you read actual bookkeeping statements from nuclear operators, national budget items, historical records about radiation incidents, nuclear deposits, agreement texts and the like, instead of reading books that can only be true if they adhere to the information in such sources. - nuclear power is…

Nuclear was safe even considering gen2 units which were not subject to all curent requirements. But the biggest impact is supply chain, not regulation. "Of course it is. Malicious actors can kill millions with the amount of nuclear waste generated daily." - ah yes. And a meteor can kill the entire earth. What's the possibility? Entire US interim storage of commercial waste costs merely 0.5bn/y until a final repositor…

>And a meteor can kill the entire earth. What's the possibility?

Both are a possibility but we can't make choices about the meteors. ;-)

Nuclear incidents due to negligence or malice are many orders of magnitude more likely, and get more likely the more waste we make and the longer we keep making it.

Europe was a bombed wasteland less than 100 years ago. Luckily that was before nuclear power plants.

Have a look at the situation in Sellafield, or the Asse II mine. Negligence has caused problems many times already.

Chernobyl is in the news recently due to drone strikes. Had it been a solar plant it wouldn't have been.

Anyway - the point is that the expensive security efforts and precautions are needed, not optional, and the historical safety record is no guarantee for future safety.

>We also know what an antinuclear path leads to

Not yet - we can hope that it leads to solar, batteries and synthesized fuels.

China has shown that it is possible, which was the last hurdle IMO. Now it's just a matter of doing it.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#939

Post by Moldoteck »

Kon5ole wrote: post #938
Moldoteck wrote: post #920

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear was safe even considering gen2 units which were not subject to all curent requirements. But the biggest impact is supply chain, not regulation. "Of course it is. Malicious actors can kill millions with the amount of nuclear waste generated daily." - ah yes. And a meteor can kill the entire earth. What's the possibility? Entire US interim storage of commercial waste costs merely 0.5bn/y until a final repositor…

>And a meteor can kill the entire earth. What's the possibility? Both are a possibility but we can't make choices about the meteors. ;-) Nuclear incidents due to negligence or malice are many orders of magnitude more likely, and get more likely the more waste we make and the longer we keep making it. Europe was a bombed wasteland less than 100 years ago. Luckily that was before nuclear power plants. Have a look at th…

Sellafield problems are due to weapons testing era.

Asse is an experimental facility without plans to extract the waste if experiment fails. Still, no public was or will be harmed since it's mostly LLW, 75% for medical and research sectors. It has nothing to do with proper deep geological repository like Onkalo. It costed 1bn to build and will cost 4bn to operate for a century with periodical topups. That's dirt cheap considering amount of power from nuclear in that period.

Nobody was affected by recent Chernobyl strikes. The tragedy there is of another kind- damaged outer dome which is expensive and equipment that was prepared to start corium cleanup was damaged, postponing the process.

Security efforts are not that expensive if compared to amount of power

China is still one of the worst global polluters and is expanding coal to use it to firm renewables. It also expands nuclear but nowhere near at the rate of France during Messmer or swedish BWR expansion. Synth fuel is nothing more than an expensive pipedream.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#940

Post by Moldoteck »

Kon5ole wrote: post #935
Moldoteck wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

still no. Highest is from coal. Entire chernobyl deaths are expected to be about 4k per old UN estimations or much less per recent UNSCEAR reports. That's for decades span. And Chernobyl was a design that the west wouldn't even allow back then... Now check coal...

Actual Chernobyl deaths is not a measure of potential deaths. It's the same flawed argument in different clothing. It assumes that what has happened is the worst that could happen, but it's not. Chernobyl was not a worst case scenario.

It pretty much was compared to modern plants. What happened there can't physically happen in western gen2 plants and even more so in gen3 units. Chernobyl is de facto the worst thing that could have happened unless we start using some wild imagination. Fukushima is a proof that a better design (albeit far from stellar) will result in orders of magnitude less damage/danger despite extreme tsunami and earthquakes
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