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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

#461

Post by Danox »

tfourb wrote: post #292
coryrc wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In January 2025, solar generated 1.5TWh of electricity in Germany (in June it generated 10TWh): https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/electricity_generat... In January 2025, Germany burned about 236 TWh of fossil fuels. You cannot even mostly replace fossil fuels with solar.

Germany will need a total of 1,867 TWh per year in 2030, so an average of 155 TWh/month. fossil fuels are very inefficient when used in most applications (especially ICE and oil for heating). As countries use more and more electricity instead of fossil fuels to generate motion and heat, total energy demand will decrease accordingly. Currently, Germany imports almost all of its fossil fuel from abroad. Mainly Norway,…

Germany shouldn’t have dismantled those nuclear power plants dumb…

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#462

Post by Arodex »

slibhb wrote: post #235
Arodex wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night. Ok, question: for the cost of one nuclear power plant, how many batteries can you have? For the cost of the R&D of one next generation nuclear reactor design, how many next generation battery and solar panels technologies can you develop?

This is such a silly argument. Battery and solar technologies are progressing regardless of people building nuclear. It's simply not the case that we can stop investing in nuclear and use that money to accelerate battery/solar. The best energy strategies are all-of-the-above.

This isn't a silly argument, this is a problem of allocation of resources.

We could have had mass solar deployment since the 70s. We chose not to, and allocate the money elsewhere. Nuclear will take away billions in public money, put it into the hands of nuclear industries, to get electricity at twice the going rate, maybe, in twenty years. A white elephant and a waste of effort.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#463

Post by SXX »

pfdietz wrote: post #370
SXX wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest problem is that people not aware of how many closed down or not built nuclear power plants been replaced with coal power plants. And coal kills more people in a week than all nuclear incidents killed in all history of humanity. Not even mention that coal power plants release more radioactive materials too.

Which nuclear plants were replaced with coal plants? If you say "German plants", I'll point out coal consumption for power generation in Germany has gone down since the decision to phase out nuclear. Coal consumption would likely have gone down even more with nuclear still being used, but that doesn't support your claim as stated.

This is not just about specific plants. Its about the fact that deployment of nuclear slowed down dramatically in last 30 years.

Coal is still generating a third of whole world power and polluting everywhere a lot.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#464

Post by Arodex »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #185
Arodex wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that people know more about what is happening in the neighbouring countries than in the other parts of Switzerland. The "national" media is very divided and only covers French-speaking regions in French, German-speaking in German, etc. as if they were local media.

Switzerland is like that. I remember asking (in my best German) the person manning a ticket counter at Zurich train station if they spoke French once, if a look could kill I'd be dead, lol. It gives the strange feeling that although they decided to create a country together they don't want to interact with each others unless absolutely necessary.

"En Suisse, on s'entend bien parce qu'on ne se comprend pas".

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#465

Post by bryanlarsen »

tcfhgj wrote: post #451
bryanlarsen wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pumped hydro is currently the cheapest long term energy storage by a significant amount.

not so cheap anymore when you want to add lot's of storage capacity

That's exactly when pumped hydro shines. Increasing the storage reservoir capacity is cheap. It's the turbines and infrastructure that's expensive, but that doesn't change if you're only increasing the capacity.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#466

Post by hollerith »

Arodex wrote: post #462
slibhb wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a silly argument. Battery and solar technologies are progressing regardless of people building nuclear. It's simply not the case that we can stop investing in nuclear and use that money to accelerate battery/solar. The best energy strategies are all-of-the-above.

This isn't a silly argument, this is a problem of allocation of resources. We could have had mass solar deployment since the 70s. We chose not to, and allocate the money elsewhere. Nuclear will take away billions in public money, put it into the hands of nuclear industries, to get electricity at twice the going rate, maybe, in twenty years. A white elephant and a waste of effort.

Can you explain how that would have worked with the much less efficient and much more expensive solar panels available in the 70s?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#467

Post by Danox »

tfourb wrote: post #330
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most models assume that a "Dunkelflaute" (span of time with significantly reduced solar and wind output) will last at most 10 days. The longest recorded in Finland is 90 days. More than two weeks of it continuously happens nearly every winter. > as the entire European electricity net is synchronized It is not. The CESA is synchronized. The various peripheral areas are not part of it. > Power transmission is a thing…

> The longest recorded in Finland is 90 days. Not trying to diss Finnland, but the country requires less than 1,000,000 Terrajoulehours of energy per year. That's like a few percent of Germany's usage. I'm sure Europe could cover you. > It is not. The CESA is synchronized. The various peripheral areas are not part of it. You are correct. But transmission lines do exist and synchronization would be possible. The balti…

It doesn’t take 20 years to build a nuclear power plant or Thorium reactor, which is coming online soon in China, it also doesn’t take that long to build high speed rail system either.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#468

Post by Arodex »

BJones12 wrote: post #171
Arodex wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then nuclear isn't it. Switzerland has no uranium and no strong relationship with an uranium-producing country. They also regularly antagonise the EU (especially the far-right isolationisz SVP/UDC, which is... pro-nuclear, of course) which controls every way fission products could be brought inside Switzerland. The same far-right country is also the one who wanted to cap the population because "there isn't room anymo…

> has no uranium and no strong relationship with an uranium-producing country The uranium-producing countries are Kazakhstan, Canada, and Namibia. There is zero chance that you cannot get one of those to sell to you. > Nuclear will also boil over Swiss rivers and shallow lakes. Wut?

If you don't know that nuclear plants are routinely shut down in the heat of summer because the cooling water is too hot, you should learn more before opining on the topic.

See this comment for more info:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48589742

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#469

Post by bryanlarsen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #417
bryanlarsen wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the simple answer is you overbuild solar to produce enough power even on cloudy days Which in practice means you put down gas turbines while that overcapacity comes online. Solar + wind + nuclear makes the most sense for decarbonisation amidst demand growth.

That overcapacity can come online a lot faster than new nuclear can be built.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#470

Post by fc417fc802 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #436
throwthrowuknow wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of animal is going to dig through concrete and steel and also be hundreds of meters underground in solid rock?

Neither concrete nor steel have the lifespans we're discussing thousands, or tens of thousands of years. And. Bacteria.

When sealed several hundred meters underground in nonporous rock they do have such long lifespans. It's like observing that corn doesn't have a 10 year lifespan when left out on the counter and then objecting to canning it on that basis.
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