Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

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.

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

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.

Tangentially related: the Swiss built a research-focused nuclear reactor in a cavern. It had a meltdown in 1969, and they were able to keep the decontamination/decommissioning efforts to a minimum by just entombing the thing in concrete.

Honestly, so long as the water table isn't too close, that's not a terrible place to put a nuclear reactor.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucens_reactor

I wish Italy did the same.

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.

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.

Citizens should take note that no nuclear plants are ever built without many billions in state loans and guarantees.

It's not a cheap source of electricity, it's a way for someone to get money from taxpayers to subsidize their business.

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.

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.

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.

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?

There is no prosperity without stable and cheap energy.

Great news, just hoping the people understand this as well.

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.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p6uxLHWVYRg&t=534s

A long-form exploration of energy in Switzerland for those interested:

https://www.heidi.news/explorations/black-out-le-talon-d-ach...

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.

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.

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.

Keeping the option open seems prudent. The hard part is winter reliability, not summer generation.

RemindMe! -20 year

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.

Best way to provide power to a population over 10 million

...but nobody wants to build it: https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/schweiz/die-schweiz-kann-wied...

fantastic!

Excellent.

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Those energy conglomerates are really desperate for public money aren't they? Sorry guys, solar and wind are cheaper

AI made this inevitable. Every country will follow.