We still have to deal with the consequences of a referendum hold not so long after che Chernobyl accident which made it illegal to build and operate nuclear power plants.
This is going to be a huge waste of time and money until we realize that building new nuclear power plants will be too expensive and too late, since we'll have figured out a renewable energy concept that'll handle the load by then. Instead we could also just join a French project, who have way more experience.
We should focus on extending our hydro power storage capacity instead.
There will be a referendum anyways, so I think it's unlikely the ban will actually be lifted.
> we'll have figured out a renewable energy concept that'll handle the load by then"
Seems like wishful thinking. If anything with the current electrical trends there will be even more demand for energy in the future and unless some miracolous clean energy source is invented, nuclear (or fossil fuel) will need to be used
Switzerland, Norway and Austria are probably the country that needs nuclear the less, but anything to start the discussion in other European countries is good.
Probably not economically viable in Switzerland though.
It's a world-wide competition to generate the most expensive electricity! The record is currently held by Vogtle in Georgia US, but Ontario Canada is trying to take the crown by spending $500B on nuclear.
Like the F-35 fighter jet, this is just another victory for lobbyists in the industry who will be able to siphon public money into over-budget, deadline busting white whale projects that will never recoup its costs.
Especially nuclear. It is now economically non-viable.
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
The thing is, so far it seems to remain the energy of the future rather than the energy of the present. Somehow the solved problems and lessons learned have just a tiny bit more before everything is resolved and ready for that big nuclear deployment.
that's just lifting the ban and is pure virtue signaling. none of the electricity producers in switzerland actually want build nuclear power plants, because they are way too expensive.
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 from the melting of snow and the sun is shining), and much less so in the winter. We can still improve 10 to 20% our hydro production, but that's it. All the water sheds are already well used and rely on our glaciers to replenish, which will become less predictable with climate change.
We shouldn't completely closing the doors to all forms of nuclear technology. Obviously, we can't build blindy without any considerations. But we may need it on the second half of the century, especially if we are going to electrify all forms of transport. We can't be buying France's nuclear energy all the time.
1. Ukraine nuclear power plants are a massive liability - they make for easy targets for the Russians to obliterate the country - is that what you want for Switzerland?
2. The waste - nobody wants it - it's a hazard for tens of thousands of years - what's the plan for managing it?
Yes energy generation (and independence) is important, no nuclear ain't it.
Ukraine still has power due to it's npp because most of ren infra got destroyed or captured because it was in the south.
The plan for managing waste in Switzerland is terradura, similar to Onkalo in Finland, similar to what Germany does with toxic waste in herfa neurode
Its bizarre that nuclear power is a left/right thing. It's clean, safe, and immediately displaces carbon emissions elsewhere. It doesn't require decades of storage and transmission improvements that may or may not come. It just works. Today.
One day nuclear will no longer be neasessary. Until that day comes it is essential. Anyone who disagrees is confusing wishful that being for physics.
I mean the situation was clear when Germany dropped nuclear before coal and gas... I can understand simping for gas, but having coal on the grid and dismantling nuclear in parallel is peak insanity
The fact that so many European green parties have been so strongly anti-nuclear was always a bit of a head-scratcher for me. It seems so dumb on so many different fronts. Goes to show the power of uninformed public, wildly misleading or actively lying stereotypes and scaremongering.
Droughts will start impacting Switzerland just like Norway. So the summer oversupply problem will turn into an undersupply.
You are right about France, especially considering EDF wants to sell excess to data centers, hence recent announcements
One of the little gems the Russians pulled off in the twenty aughts when they were flooding nonprofits in the USA with dirty money was hijacking the green movement to promote fracking. (Because surely ANYTHING is better than those dastardly electrons or whatever the fuck radiation is made of)
Switzerland, unlike the USA, seems capable of safely operating these plants, and with advances in breeder technology new plants doesn't nessecarily mean new mining operations, which often are quite harsh on the surrounding area.
I am happy with subsidies that are paid now so that the future can benefit from it. That's what states should be doing.
I am not happy with subsidies that lets people consume things cheaply now by leaving the bill to the future. That's not what states should be doing.
Subsidizing solar until the production got cheap enough not to need any more subsidies is a good example of the former, building nuclear plants is a good example of the latter.
It's not like Germany is not subsidizing renewables and building gas plants in parallel to firm them... Entire EEG is already double the price of entire french nuclear fleet...
This is at best the concept of a vibe shift. Even if they started sprinting now, it would be 20 years before anyone would see the results of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear is so much more expensive than solar and wind that building one is certain to raise electricity prices.
Swiss will get nukes, denmark will get nukes, sweden will get nukes, finland will get..poland, ukraine, germany, armenia, georgia, armenia, turkey, vietnam, japan, south korea, emirates all gonna get, saudi already got.. [this list is incomplete, you can help to complete this list by doing a empire]. Ironically during the cold war a ton of countries went and became almost nuclear powers. Now thos world is so back baby and the reality denial and loud noises do nothing. Almost as if this plot device never had any connection to anything.
While I'm sold on the fact that modern nuclear can be built & administered safely in the face of natural disasters, and is a net good environmentally, I'm worried about corporate cronyism's corrosive effects on safety (a la Fukushima) and future instability in the form of cornered animals (e.g. Putin, Trump) acting erratically by bombing civilian infrastructure.
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?
They have a pretty small population, but wind will likely be intolerable because it will harm views[0]. Solar requires surface area as well. So that leaves hydro, which they'll have to pump during the summer months to ensure they have coverage for winter, or nuclear. Or fossil fuels, of course. Gas is still probably optimal for them. I suppose that's the nature of things. We all care very much about the climate, but we do care about our views more.
0: I personally like the look of wind turbines but I understand many don't. The appearance is likely why the Trump administration canceled such projects.
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.
With basically almost nothing coming online for decades and the handful of projects that do come online being late, hundreds of percent over budget, and delivering only a relatively tiny amount of power (relative to the equivalent of hundreds of new reactors worth of solar/wind/battery every year), it's hard to maintain that nuclear has any role whatsoever to play. No amount of magical thinking is going to change that any time soon.
The AI revolution will be mostly over by the time any substantial amount of new reactors come online. Whatever power they'll use, it will mostly not be nuclear. It's a lot of gas right now that will likely shift to a mix of much cheaper solar and wind. Nuclear powered AI will be a rounding error.
Maybe somebody will figure out how to do new nuclear plants in under a decade (good luck!). That would be spectacularly fast. But if it's not planned and approved right now (and very little is), we're basically talking the 1940's for any significant new capacity to come online. That would still be a tiny fraction of the yearly growth in renewables. That probably will accumulate to about three orders of magnitude more power generation in the time until then. With hundreds of GW added per year, we are talking at least a few TW of generation cumulatively.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadWe still have to deal with the consequences of a referendum hold not so long after che Chernobyl accident which made it illegal to build and operate nuclear power plants.
We should focus on extending our hydro power storage capacity instead.
There will be a referendum anyways, so I think it's unlikely the ban will actually be lifted.
Seems like wishful thinking. If anything with the current electrical trends there will be even more demand for energy in the future and unless some miracolous clean energy source is invented, nuclear (or fossil fuel) will need to be used
Probably not economically viable in Switzerland though.
Especially nuclear. It is now economically non-viable.
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 from the melting of snow and the sun is shining), and much less so in the winter. We can still improve 10 to 20% our hydro production, but that's it. All the water sheds are already well used and rely on our glaciers to replenish, which will become less predictable with climate change.
We shouldn't completely closing the doors to all forms of nuclear technology. Obviously, we can't build blindy without any considerations. But we may need it on the second half of the century, especially if we are going to electrify all forms of transport. We can't be buying France's nuclear energy all the time.
2. The waste - nobody wants it - it's a hazard for tens of thousands of years - what's the plan for managing it?
Yes energy generation (and independence) is important, no nuclear ain't it.
One day nuclear will no longer be neasessary. Until that day comes it is essential. Anyone who disagrees is confusing wishful that being for physics.
Actually, why not ? I mean this as a serious question.
Just like Oregon or New Mexico do not have problems getting (possibly nuclear) energy from California.
You just have to believe in the concept of Europe hard enough.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/849994733672039/posts/136230...
It's crazy that the left and green parties are against cheap, sustainable and clean energy for the masses.
Switzerland, unlike the USA, seems capable of safely operating these plants, and with advances in breeder technology new plants doesn't nessecarily mean new mining operations, which often are quite harsh on the surrounding area.
It's not a cheap source of electricity, it's a way for someone to get money from taxpayers to subsidize their business.
Or are we only happy with state subsidies when China does it?
I am not happy with subsidies that lets people consume things cheaply now by leaving the bill to the future. That's not what states should be doing.
Subsidizing solar until the production got cheap enough not to need any more subsidies is a good example of the former, building nuclear plants is a good example of the latter.
https://www.heidi.news/explorations/black-out-le-talon-d-ach...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p6uxLHWVYRg&t=534s
0: I personally like the look of wind turbines but I understand many don't. The appearance is likely why the Trump administration canceled such projects.
The AI revolution will be mostly over by the time any substantial amount of new reactors come online. Whatever power they'll use, it will mostly not be nuclear. It's a lot of gas right now that will likely shift to a mix of much cheaper solar and wind. Nuclear powered AI will be a rounding error.
Maybe somebody will figure out how to do new nuclear plants in under a decade (good luck!). That would be spectacularly fast. But if it's not planned and approved right now (and very little is), we're basically talking the 1940's for any significant new capacity to come online. That would still be a tiny fraction of the yearly growth in renewables. That probably will accumulate to about three orders of magnitude more power generation in the time until then. With hundreds of GW added per year, we are talking at least a few TW of generation cumulatively.