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Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

bluewin.ch

981–990 of 1001 posts

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#981

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand the waste problem is tremendously overblown. Move it to some storage facility somewhere, that's fine. Just keep it on site, that's fine too. A typical gigawatt reactor produces about 20 tons of waste annually, which sounds like a lot but remember this stuff is quite dense, so it would actually take 4 years to fill up a standard shipping container. The storage units for this stuff is incredibly…

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'…

> if you're testing your water daily for tritium you'll catch it, but how often does that happen?

A good geiger counter can be bought on Amazon for $30. Something is either radioactive or it's not. You don't need to have a sophisticated understanding of the chemistry to test if dangerous radiation is present or not, nor do you need sophisticated equipment. My point is that being next to a radiation hazard should not cause the same sort of anxiety-of-the-unknown that living next to, for example, a chemical plant that may produce a menagerie of difficult-to-detect carcinogens.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#982
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the sentiment of nuclear depends purely on which party you vote for Unless you personally agree with whatever your preferred party's line is on everything and generalize that sentiment, I'm not sure how to get to that conclusion.

I am member of the SP in Switzerland and I am pro nuclear. I don’t know why we put people in political buckets. It’s good to disagree. I am probably the weird guy but so be it.

I think part of the answer is how much American culture permeates a lot of the online discourse - including their ultra-partisan politics.

There isn't a single party that represents what I believe in - some are just overall clos0er to than others.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#983

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you just call nuclear reactors as "nukes"?

Yes? So? Fairly common shorthand when discussing electric power systems. No one confuses it with bombs, because that would be silly.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#984
post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet dams have killed more people than nuclear plants.

They have been around a bit longer don't you think? How many nuclear actually killed is unknown because it's not as easy as: something happens, people drown. It's more like: something happens, a few die fast, the rest dies earlier, their children live shorter or have disabilities, their children also, and so on. Meanwhile collecting waste which will do the same for later generations who might not remember what nuclea…

> How many nuclear actually killed is unknown because it's not as easy as: something happens, people drown.

Did you even bother to read about how we estimate the casualties of nuclear incidents? It really sounds like you didn't, and just shared your first thought about it not being trivial.

> They have been around a bit longer don't you think?

How in the world does that make them less risky? If a dam collapses, it's generally very bad, even if it is an old dam.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#986

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European car manufacturers have been given every opportunity and encouragement to build EVs and the phrase "dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century" springs to mind. People are buying BYD because they're better cars, not because they're forced to.

Honestly, VW spent years developing the ID line which was just too expensive, buggy, and constanly positioned as an alternative to much cheaper and better equipped Golf/Polo lines - it's like they were afraid to canibalize their own products. I don't know a single person who owned an ID.3 and was actually happy with it. Or Mercedes, where they decided to build extremely expensive EVs that departed from their core des…

Just a small nitpick: Renault isn't Stellantis and have been quite competitive (if a bit timid) in the EV space. First with the Zoe and now with the Renault 5.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#987

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as cheap nuclear reactor. Even cheaper Chernobyl type is expensive to build.

There is. Hualongs and ABWR were/are about 3bn/unit. Local Korean APR is about 4.5bn/unit

The four APRs built in Abu Dhabi cost $32 billion in total and the two they've contracted to build in Czechia is projected to cost $18 billion in total.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#988

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolling/Not Trolling. Imagine if we spent the money we did developing nuclear on photo voltaic and batteries instead. Because seriously we spent next to NOTHING on PV solar and batteries.

I do see how France and Sweden have lowest GHG emissions in EU by building both nuclear and renewables. I see other countries like Denmark/Germany who decided to go with ren alone. Germany spent on EEG double than entire french nuclear fleet. We can see the results. There's no race here. There's no imagine if. We already have historical data. We already have results on hand

I don't see that?

France: 4.12 tons CO2 per capita Denmark: 4.34 tons CO2 per capita

and the electricity price for industrial costumers is also close to identical:

France: 0.153 EUR/kWh (0.130 EUR/kWh without taxes) Denmark 0.122 EUR/kWh (0.121 EUR/kWh without taxes)

CO2 data from EUs EDGAR: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=co2pop#emissi...

Price data from: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#989

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables don't need to fulfill everything all the time. If they need assistance from fossil fuels 10% of the time, that's a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. The last 10% won't be the biggest issue to deal with. So you can build expensive nuclear plants for that small fraction of the time, or you can continue to use existing fossil fuel plants for free. The difference to the carbon bottom line is small.

"Renewables don't need to fulfill everything all the time. If they need assistance from fossil fuels 10% of the time, that's a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. The last 10% won't be the biggest issue to deal with." - so funny seeing environmentalists accepting parallel gas infrastructure when countries like France/Sweden don't have it.

France does have parallel gas infrastructure though. It's, funnily enough, at around 10% of their electricity supply.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#990

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, VW spent years developing the ID line which was just too expensive, buggy, and constanly positioned as an alternative to much cheaper and better equipped Golf/Polo lines - it's like they were afraid to canibalize their own products. I don't know a single person who owned an ID.3 and was actually happy with it. Or Mercedes, where they decided to build extremely expensive EVs that departed from their core des…

Just a small nitpick: Renault isn't Stellantis and have been quite competitive (if a bit timid) in the EV space. First with the Zoe and now with the Renault 5.

Ah, you're right, sorry.
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