Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

bluewin.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 1001 posts

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#191

Post by b112 »

t1234s wrote: post #184

Switzerland seems like a country where they wouldn't have trouble hiring enough very responsible serious people capable of running nuclear plants. Aside from being able to acquire fuel is there any reason they are not near 100% nuclear?

Yes. Environmentalists.

There are people which want the best we can do (eg, no Ng, coal, etc) in electricity generation. Sensible reductions, that sort of thing. Then there are those that just want no electricity to be used at all, ever, period.

They'll complain about hydroelectric(carbon in cement production), about things which can happen with nuclear(accidents), about birds in windmills, about the production methods of making solar panels, and so on. To such people, doing anything is bad for the environment, so therefore, every type of power generation is bad.

To listen to such people is, of course, madness, as is listening to all extremists. We should simply ignore them completely, but of course the news exists, fake protestors exist which are paid, and so on and so forth.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#192

Post by jltsiren »

UltraSane wrote: post #175
jltsiren wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political will is not the actual bottleneck. Finland has given the initial permit for three nuclear reactors in the past 25 years. One was eventually built after massive delays and cost overruns. Another was canceled, because the company chosen to build it first proved to be incompetent and later also politically undesirable. As for the third reactor, the company that got the permit determined that it makes more sens…

China and South Korea can build nuclear reactors cheaply.

One of the bids for the third reactor was for KEPCO's APR-1400. Like the other bids, it was too expensive to make sense without subsidies.

China probably fits in the "politically undesirable" category these days.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#193

Post by wat10000 »

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...

Your link says increased modulation adds 1.5-3.75 million euros/year in maintenance costs. That's utterly insignificant for the electricity supply to a nation of 70 million.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#196

Post by TimorousBestie »

pydry wrote: post #182
rayiner wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death. They’re the third biggest villains of climate change, after consumers and oil companies. If the whole developed world had nuclearized the way France did, our discussions about climate change would be entirely different. We would have decades more runway to avoid 2C+ scenarios. We would have already electrified vast swaths of the econom…

>environmentalists have choked it to death. Those regulations you despise were written in blood. Moreover, Nuclear power enjoys free catastrophe insurance. If a Fukushima style meltdown happens, the taxpayer is always on the hook for 95%+ of the cleanup costs. So yeah, all you have to do is let them keep their freebie insurance, lavish them with subsidies and water down the regulations which make it vastly more likel…

> If a Fukushima style meltdown happens, the taxpayer is always on the hook for 95%+ of the cleanup costs.

An apt reference. In both India and China it was the Fukushima disaster that spurred protests and stalled nuclear power growth. Organized environmental activism in both countries is basically nonexistent.

I would rank US-led nonproliferation policies above environmental activism as a cause for slow nuclear adoption as well. (Nonproliferation was primarily a military objective, by the way, not an environmentalist one.) Many countries only have nuclear power programs because France decided to occasionally proliferate them, many times over US objections.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#198

Post by embedding-shape »

nxy wrote: post #194

Whether people like it or not, nuclear power is the path forward for the foreseeable future; at least until nuclear fusion becomes a reality. With incoming AI/automation, ya’ll need all the power ya can get.

Yeah what the hell, I want tiny and small nuke-batteries so we can finally get cars and phones that doesn't need charging anymore, would solve a lot of problems and surely won't introduce any new ones.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#199

Post by Gud »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #189
Gud wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this argument comes up, “it’s too slow and expensive “, I ask that person to please explain to me how my home country Sweden managed to build all those reactors in the 70s and 80s both fast and cheap? They’ve been amazing for us, despite the fact that some of them was recklessly shutdown prematurely by an ignorant political class.

1. Nuclear has a negative learning curve. It’s gotten more expensive with time. Part of the reason is increasing geopolitical risks (the U.S. just launched a war on Iran because of the possibility it may upgrade nuclear material to weapon capabilities), lost knowledge and expertise, and also the increasing relative cost of financing in the cost of energy projects. 2. Nuclear was built at a time when governments were…

1. I personally believe the “lost knowledge “ is overstated. Europe knows very well how to manage large scale infrastructure projects. It still has a healthy nuclear industry.

2. Once the vote is there(Switzerland is a direct democracy), the public funds will be there. Sweden has recently chosen to invest ~40B Euro.

3. Solar, really? In Switzerland? Many parts of the industrialised world receive very little sun, especially in winter, where coincidentally, energy usage peaks.

And intermittent power generation like wind is no competition to nuclear.

These are very weak arguments. Good luck replacing Oskarshamn with solar panels…

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#200

Post by UltraSane »

esarbe wrote: post #158
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

There's no measure by which nuclear energy is the "energy of the future". It's too complex, too expensive and it doesn't scale. SMRs are proving to be a fever dream with ever rising costs and the number of nuclear reactors in operation is decreasing year by year and both Wind and PV are now each producing more electricity than nuclear. Nuclear has had its moment. That moment is gone.

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.

Post reply on HN