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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

#561

Post by bilekas »

ahtihn wrote: post #190
bilekas wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not and that's fine, but it's very much part of the European economic area, and we have a great relationship as well as a lot of alignments with standards and so on. The EU wouldn't have no issues taking notes from the Swiss.

Switzerland is not part of the European economic area, aka EEA.

You're correct to point it out. Officially not. But basically yes. We have a free trade and they're part of our Schengen area, so for all intents and purposes there's almost no barriers to trade. I should have been more clear.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#562

Post by WhyNotHugo »

jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

> All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear.

It's crazy that the left and green parties are against cheap, sustainable and clean energy for the masses.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#563

Post by itishappy »

Handrail wrote: post #558

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…

Keep in mind that the energy density of nuclear fuel is astronomically higher than that of coal, so even if the processes were equivalently wasteful (and I'm fairly certain they are not) coal would still cause significantly more damage. The process also differ significantly:

Uranium is often pumped out of the ground after being chemically extracted.

Coal is almost always carted out after being blasted.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#564

Post by crote »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #278
Jolter wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden recently did the same: in order for companies to agree to make new reactors, the government had to promise them a price floor for the electricity they produce. The price floor suggested is more than twice the current price on the spot market. That means that, for the lifetime of those reactors, Swedish taxpayers will be subsidizing production of nuclear power. I thought the idea was that they would be profitab…

Base load generation. Yes, we have hydro. Wind is way too unpredictable, solar is too. So, we can only have 2 powers to provide base load in Sweden. https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/

Nuclear base load is a lie.

The aforementioned subsidies aren't just for the electricity it produces, it is also for the electricity it could produce. The nuclear plant has a right to sell electricity to the grid at a certain price. Market price too low? The government pays the difference. No demand? The government buys the unused production capacity.

In practice this means that during periods of excess you are shutting down dirt-cheap solar and wind just so you can run a heavily-subsidized nuclear power plant. Nuclear doesn't pick up the gaps left by solar and wind, solar and wind pick up the gaps left by nuclear!

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#565

Post by crote »

15155 wrote: post #452
Manuel_D wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the enrichment of uranium have to do with humans working in proximity? In both low-enriched land based plants and in marine nuclear power plants, the radioactive materials are contained in the pressure vessel and inner cooling loop.

HEU results in fewer actinide products and a substantially more-compact reactor.

So in other words: a non-naval SMR which doesn't use HEU is going to be substantially larger - which would make it substantially more expensive, and therefore not representative of civilian SMRs?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#566

Post by aeturnum »

throw0101c wrote: post #544
aeturnum wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be the most frustrating aspect of the nuclear discourse. The "waste problem" is technically solved (we believe, gotta wait ~10k years to know) in a way that depends on a social solution that doesn't seem to exist. Pro-nuke people will handwave it away, ignoring the total failure to secure storage sites in most places, and the anti-nuclear people treat it as a fatal flaw in the technology (which it isn'…

> I find this to be the most frustrating aspect of the nuclear discourse. The "waste problem" is technically solved (we believe, gotta wait ~10k years to know) It's not a 10k year problem, it's a ~300 year problem, after which most of it is at the same level as natural uranium ore; and the stuff that isn't can be blocked via aluminium foil (to stop beta particles). The first 10-20 years post-removal are the most dang…

That's fair and I'll admit to using a bit of hyperbole with that number. My point is that we are designing solutions for time scales we haven't actually been able to test over and while we have every reason to believe our solutions will work - they might not.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#567

Post by thelastgallon »

Two things to keep in mind when thinking about nuclear

1) Has the lowest deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

2) Any country that is not US absolutely needs to invest in nuclear technology. This is for your own security. In addition to providing energy security, it also provides physical security (with a bit more work).

Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to:

1) Direct attacks

2) Sanctions which destroy your economy and quality of life of your citizens

3) Fossil fuel disruptions, either intentional or malicious

With nuclear + solar, you have an unbeatable combination of all forms of security. Every country wastes lots and lots of money on many useless initiatives. Nuclear might seem costly, but security is somewhat important.

The rest of the world on clean energy will ultimately help people in US, because there will be less foreign adventures and oil will be a lot cheaper when all that demand is destroyed, supply chains are not disrupted by these wars.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#568

Post by crote »

lightedman wrote: post #338
RealityVoid wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, this is interesting. I am skeptic about DC's in space, but I do appreciate people actually doing stuff. What is it computing up there. How did you get it up? How does one usually talk with their satellite. I guess you don't merely have a dish since it's probably not geostationary.

"What is it computing up there." Hyperspectral satellite imagery - think ASTER/LANDSAT/MODIS but more modern, for surficial minerals study. "How did you get it up?" How else? Paid a rocket company to launch it into orbit after proving various flightworthiness tests and getting various certifications and permissions from relevant gov't authorities. "How does one usually talk with their satellite. I guess you don't mer…

Right, so a regular satellite. That's indeed as relevant to the multi-100kW-scale "space datacenter" idiots like Musk are proposing as naval SMRs are to commercial power plants.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#569

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #156
well_ackshually wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'll be so happy about being price competitive when the conditions are bad for like a week and the country just doesn't run (or rely on other countries price gouging you for what your country needs to exist.) Opposing nuclear & renewables is stupid. You need both. You need as many power sources as you can, as quick as you can while the resources are available. Energy is not something you leave up to the invisible h…

> You need both Why do you need both? It's possible to get 99.99% reliability with wind & solar & batteries & weather modelling. There are multiple ways to handle a week long dankelflaute without nuclear: overbuilding, continental scale distribution, lots of batteries, etc. All are cheaper than nuclear. It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability out of any grid, even a nuclear dominated one. L…

[deleted]

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#570

Post by Saline9515 »

frollogaston wrote: post #555
leonidasrup wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waste management has been solved problem. "A number of mercury, cyanide and arsenic waste repositories are operating worldwide including Canada (Giant Mine) and Germany (potash mines in Herfa-Neurode and Zielitz). Radioactive waste storage sites are under construction with the Onkalo in Finland being the most advanced." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository "The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP…

Every time someone mentions a year where nuclear started being "safe," I find an incident after that year where radioactive or otherwise toxic materials were leaked into the surrounding environment, plus plenty of near misses. Broader than waste though. Maybe focus on how the likely alternatives are worse. The world isn't going to run completely on renewables, and coal puts surefire poison AND radioactive isotopes in…

While there are problems, I think that you should compare with alternative technologies to be fair. For instance, coal used in Germany and China actually releases more radioactive material than nuclear!

A great perk of nuclear waste s that it's so small compared to the power produced, it's way easier to dispose and manage, than, say, expired wind turbines (which aren't recycled currently and take a massive amount of space).

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