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Unfortunately a few years before the recent issues a totally idiotic anti-nuclear popular vote happen. The campaign was driven by poor fear and just utter nonse

Unfortunately a few years before the recent issues a totally idiotic anti-nuclear popular vote happen. The campaign was driven by poor fear and just utter nonsense. Basically it was so absurdly anti nuclear, even banning research. Switzerland has some of the oldest nuclear plants but they still work great. We should have been building more for many decades now. Unfortunately our idiot politicians literally had the attitude that it was just so cheap and easy to import electricity from Germany and France. I have been hoping for new nuclear builds in Switzerland for decades, but I was crushed when we voted on this and banned everything. Nuclear is perfect for Switzerland, during the day it can power the grid and at night we can use the hydro for storage. I really hope some party tries to reverse this and advocates for building a new modern nuclear plant. Switzerland was once a leader in nuclear technology and we should be again.

Jabrov 4y ago
> We should have been building more for many decades now. Meanwhile China is basically building as many GW as everybody else.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Unlike western rivals, Russia never stopped building reactors year after year, even exporting them to places like Turkey, India, Bangladesh, China, they recently got a sale to Egypt. The VVER-1200 is the equal of western reactors and the VVER-TOI builds on that. They've got a beautiful new LMFBR and fuel fabrication facility to match. And they just had to invade their neighbor, behave irresponsibly at Енергода́р and blow it for themselves and possibly the world.
echelon 4y ago
> The campaign was driven by poor fear and just utter nonsense. Our geopolitical rivals latched onto the green movement and actively spread this fear. We can't characterize this as just fear and nonsense. It was a state sponsored campaign to turn us against our own best interests. And it worked.
- consumer451 4y ago
  It is very popular to pin this all on "greens." While it's partially true, blaming the greens and now foreign powers is also a very convenient narrative for the fossil fuel industry. There is more to the story. Sometimes the enemy is closer to home. > As part of reporting called “Pay Dirt,” The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay released some exclusive research entitled “Inside the Gas Industry’s Plan to Sink Nuclear Power,” about the corporate front groups that arose to do political battle over proposals by a number of states to prop up nuclear power plants struggling in the wake of dirt-cheap natural gas. In particular, he delved deep into the American Petroleum Institute’s organization of opposition to Bill 11, Pennsylvania’s proposed legislation to stave off financial ruin for Pennsylvania’s nuclear power plants through an initiative called No Nuclear Bailouts. Markay was able to access the API’s Power point plan detailing a host of activities, including “grassroots” activism, legislator “intercepts, and the engagement of third-party groups and “key influencers” in its attempt to sway policymakers. This is just one example of how the API has sought to bolster its own market share by working to undermine nuclear energy. https://climatecoalition.org/who-opposes-nuclear-energy/ https://climatecoalition.org/who-opposes-nuclear-energy/
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Yes, but see the thing here is that literally nobody things gas, oil and coal would ever like nuclear. Their hostility was foregone conclusion from the very moment of the invention of nuclear power. To make nuclear power successful, support from the progressive part of society would have been required. Nuclear was more expensive then coal but not by that much and the benefits of nuclear were huge in terms of environment. But if you have an environmental movement who is extremely against nuclear power, there is just very little left. The greens acted as if the nuclear industry was some juggernaut, when in effect it was tiny compared to fossil industry. The early environmental opposition then influenced the overall leftist or liberal movement in general and nuclear was basically dead. Neither having strong support on the right or left.
    - consumer451 4y ago
      > The greens acted as if the nuclear industry was some juggernaut, when in effect it was tiny compared to fossil industry. It was actually an integral part of the military industrial complex, not exactly "tiny." That might have had something to do with the political alignment. But as usual, looking at this situation while wearing standard issue left/right political blinders is less than helpful.
Maursault 4y ago
> a totally idiotic anti-nuclear popular vote happen Pro-Nukes like to focus on NIMBYs and fools in fear of radiation, and ignore what the problem with nuclear power actually is and has always been: economic. The fact of the matter is nuclear power has never, never ever, been profitable, and it has nothing to do with regulations. Fission is the singular most expensive way to generate electricity, and always has been. Only nations could develop nuclear power, paid for by taxes, and the return on the investment was never realized. Investors are only interested in reaping the benefits of charging for electricity, and leave governments and tax payers holding the bag when it comes time to decommission and to deal with the waste, which includes very expensive security. And these days, it costs $10B just to build a nuclear plant before any electricity is generated, and that's just construction costs. The solution is quite simple, my friend: make nuclear power profitable, make it competitive with alternative energies, and you can have a nuke plant in every major city in the world. That's really all you need to do, investors will take care of everything else. But until you do, do not expect any investors to appear and throw their massive capital down the drain just so you can have outrageously expensive electicity.
- dashundchen 4y ago
  I agree with this. I don't know why people somehow blame the lack of new nuclear energy in the US on environmental groups. Environmentalism in the US the past 50 years certainly hasn't been able to stop energy interests from exploiting coal, oil and then natural gas after phasing out coal. Were nuclear power to be comparable in price I would have no doubt it would have been built. Though environmentalists have pushed a long time for renewables (and certainly were a force pushing for research to be funded) it wasn't until solar and wind prices started the s-curve of price improvements til we saw big installations.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  First of all, the anti-nuclear vote was incredibly dumb whether you decide to build a new nuclear plant or not. Note, this was not a vote for or against a nuclear power plant, rather it was a general popular vote against nuclear power for now particular reason. That nuclear is expensive is also nonsense. France had incredibly cheap electricity prices for 50 years and most of that was paid for by their cheap electricity prices. Even during the recent crisis while Germany is struggling and dropping 100s of millions in support, France still has cheap electricity. In fact, if you take the price of recently built South Korean reactors, turning the whole German grid 100% nuclear, including cheap long term electricity prices, would cost around 250-300 billion $ conservatively. That is less then Germany is currently planning to spend in support, completely outside of all the cost of the 'Grünewende' over the last 20 years and the next 20 years. When you actually calculate the cost of a society going to green electricity, 0 to 100%, nuclear is by far the best option and in reality its the only option that has proven to work for a modern industrial society. > The fact of the matter is nuclear power has never, never ever, been profitable A number of issues with this. First of all, all power supply in Europe is managed by government and profitability is not really the goal. If you can produce it cheaply, people just pay less. Therefore success in European energy policy is price paid by consumers. And in so far as that, places with well run nuclear operations have long term fix cheap electricity prices. Switzerland has not build a new nuclear reactor in many decades, and yet people living around those reactors are still receiving cheap power and will continue to do so for decades to come. Further, when wind and solar became to be pushed, it was certainty no profitable in the way you suggest. In fact the opposite, it took decades, and was supported by government policies all over the western world and china. The boom in roof solar in the US was directly driven by government support and collapsed after. Much installation of solar/wind happened because of government mandates to have a certain % of renewable electricity. At the same time, when renewables were introduced, basically all countries just pretended that intermittency wasn't a thing and put no value on base energy supply. In the US, solar companies made money even when producing energy when price was 0. I can go threw many more examples, in France for example the government forced the profitable utility (because of nuclear) to invest in solar (and also gas and other fossil). The simple fact is, solar and wind were pushed in Europe and the United states as a point of principle, when it started it was very much not about profitability, and many decisions were made to support that deployment. This overtime lowered the price of the these deployments. Nuclear was often explicitly excluded from all these benefits, despite being just as green. In fact we had the opposite, where most western governments did their best to utterly destroy nuclear and trying to give them every disadvantage. In Germany and other places like Belgium nuclear was planned to be phased out. In France in 2015 they literally decided to start shutting down large parts of their fleet by 2025. Had we spend the last couple decades using every possible means to push nuclear we would have seen a different result. Had we simply picked 1 type of reactor and with the EU planned to build 100 of those across Europe, we would have spent less money for a much better result. As France proved in the 70/80s, as soon as you mass produce these, you can do it quickly and cheaply. > And these days, it costs $10B just to build a nuclear plant before any electricity is generated, and that's just construction costs. UAE just build 4xARP-1400 for US$24.4 billion. That is in a country with no existing infrastructure and no knowlage base. Yes, if you build a one time specific reactor it might cost 10 billion, but as we can see in the UAE example, with each one you build them faster and cheaper. If Europe would just build many ARP-1400, soon the per unit cost would be very small. As France has shown in 70/80s, you can easily finish 5 reactors per year and build them within 5 years. If we as a society are actually serious and want to quickly move have 100% green grid, nuclear is the logical conclusion. Its not expensive, in fact its the opposite, its the most efficient. It has the least amount of resources used, the least amount of land, its the cleanest and the most reliable. Your whole perspective acts as if energy is some kind of free market, when in effect literally every where around the globe it actually isn't, it is about politics. Your narrow minded profit focused perspective is just ignorant of the reality of global energy policy. And even if it were true that nuclear was more expensive, for Switzerland it would still make sense. Other nations can use energy policy to put pressure on us. Having reliable local electricity at slightly higher cost is still beneficial.
somedude895 4y ago
> I really hope some party tries to reverse this and advocates for building a new modern nuclear plant. If you just don't vote Green/SP you're halfway there.

Jabrov 4y ago

> We should have been building more for many decades now. Meanwhile China is basically building as many GW as everybody else.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Unlike western rivals, Russia never stopped building reactors year after year, even exporting them to places like Turkey, India, Bangladesh, China, they recently got a sale to Egypt. The VVER-1200 is the equal of western reactors and the VVER-TOI builds on that. They've got a beautiful new LMFBR and fuel fabrication facility to match. And they just had to invade their neighbor, behave irresponsibly at Енергода́р and blow it for themselves and possibly the world.

echelon 4y ago

> The campaign was driven by poor fear and just utter nonsense. Our geopolitical rivals latched onto the green movement and actively spread this fear. We can't characterize this as just fear and nonsense. It was a state sponsored campaign to turn us against our own best interests. And it worked.

consumer451 4y ago
It is very popular to pin this all on "greens." While it's partially true, blaming the greens and now foreign powers is also a very convenient narrative for the fossil fuel industry. There is more to the story. Sometimes the enemy is closer to home. > As part of reporting called “Pay Dirt,” The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay released some exclusive research entitled “Inside the Gas Industry’s Plan to Sink Nuclear Power,” about the corporate front groups that arose to do political battle over proposals by a number of states to prop up nuclear power plants struggling in the wake of dirt-cheap natural gas. In particular, he delved deep into the American Petroleum Institute’s organization of opposition to Bill 11, Pennsylvania’s proposed legislation to stave off financial ruin for Pennsylvania’s nuclear power plants through an initiative called No Nuclear Bailouts. Markay was able to access the API’s Power point plan detailing a host of activities, including “grassroots” activism, legislator “intercepts, and the engagement of third-party groups and “key influencers” in its attempt to sway policymakers. This is just one example of how the API has sought to bolster its own market share by working to undermine nuclear energy. https://climatecoalition.org/who-opposes-nuclear-energy/ https://climatecoalition.org/who-opposes-nuclear-energy/
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Yes, but see the thing here is that literally nobody things gas, oil and coal would ever like nuclear. Their hostility was foregone conclusion from the very moment of the invention of nuclear power. To make nuclear power successful, support from the progressive part of society would have been required. Nuclear was more expensive then coal but not by that much and the benefits of nuclear were huge in terms of environment. But if you have an environmental movement who is extremely against nuclear power, there is just very little left. The greens acted as if the nuclear industry was some juggernaut, when in effect it was tiny compared to fossil industry. The early environmental opposition then influenced the overall leftist or liberal movement in general and nuclear was basically dead. Neither having strong support on the right or left.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    > The greens acted as if the nuclear industry was some juggernaut, when in effect it was tiny compared to fossil industry. It was actually an integral part of the military industrial complex, not exactly "tiny." That might have had something to do with the political alignment. But as usual, looking at this situation while wearing standard issue left/right political blinders is less than helpful.

Maursault 4y ago

> a totally idiotic anti-nuclear popular vote happen Pro-Nukes like to focus on NIMBYs and fools in fear of radiation, and ignore what the problem with nuclear power actually is and has always been: economic. The fact of the matter is nuclear power has never, never ever, been profitable, and it has nothing to do with regulations. Fission is the singular most expensive way to generate electricity, and always has been. Only nations could develop nuclear power, paid for by taxes, and the return on the investment was never realized. Investors are only interested in reaping the benefits of charging for electricity, and leave governments and tax payers holding the bag when it comes time to decommission and to deal with the waste, which includes very expensive security. And these days, it costs $10B just to build a nuclear plant before any electricity is generated, and that's just construction costs. The solution is quite simple, my friend: make nuclear power profitable, make it competitive with alternative energies, and you can have a nuke plant in every major city in the world. That's really all you need to do, investors will take care of everything else. But until you do, do not expect any investors to appear and throw their massive capital down the drain just so you can have outrageously expensive electicity.

dashundchen 4y ago
I agree with this. I don't know why people somehow blame the lack of new nuclear energy in the US on environmental groups. Environmentalism in the US the past 50 years certainly hasn't been able to stop energy interests from exploiting coal, oil and then natural gas after phasing out coal. Were nuclear power to be comparable in price I would have no doubt it would have been built. Though environmentalists have pushed a long time for renewables (and certainly were a force pushing for research to be funded) it wasn't until solar and wind prices started the s-curve of price improvements til we saw big installations.
panick21_ 4y ago
First of all, the anti-nuclear vote was incredibly dumb whether you decide to build a new nuclear plant or not. Note, this was not a vote for or against a nuclear power plant, rather it was a general popular vote against nuclear power for now particular reason. That nuclear is expensive is also nonsense. France had incredibly cheap electricity prices for 50 years and most of that was paid for by their cheap electricity prices. Even during the recent crisis while Germany is struggling and dropping 100s of millions in support, France still has cheap electricity. In fact, if you take the price of recently built South Korean reactors, turning the whole German grid 100% nuclear, including cheap long term electricity prices, would cost around 250-300 billion $ conservatively. That is less then Germany is currently planning to spend in support, completely outside of all the cost of the 'Grünewende' over the last 20 years and the next 20 years. When you actually calculate the cost of a society going to green electricity, 0 to 100%, nuclear is by far the best option and in reality its the only option that has proven to work for a modern industrial society. > The fact of the matter is nuclear power has never, never ever, been profitable A number of issues with this. First of all, all power supply in Europe is managed by government and profitability is not really the goal. If you can produce it cheaply, people just pay less. Therefore success in European energy policy is price paid by consumers. And in so far as that, places with well run nuclear operations have long term fix cheap electricity prices. Switzerland has not build a new nuclear reactor in many decades, and yet people living around those reactors are still receiving cheap power and will continue to do so for decades to come. Further, when wind and solar became to be pushed, it was certainty no profitable in the way you suggest. In fact the opposite, it took decades, and was supported by government policies all over the western world and china. The boom in roof solar in the US was directly driven by government support and collapsed after. Much installation of solar/wind happened because of government mandates to have a certain % of renewable electricity. At the same time, when renewables were introduced, basically all countries just pretended that intermittency wasn't a thing and put no value on base energy supply. In the US, solar companies made money even when producing energy when price was 0. I can go threw many more examples, in France for example the government forced the profitable utility (because of nuclear) to invest in solar (and also gas and other fossil). The simple fact is, solar and wind were pushed in Europe and the United states as a point of principle, when it started it was very much not about profitability, and many decisions were made to support that deployment. This overtime lowered the price of the these deployments. Nuclear was often explicitly excluded from all these benefits, despite being just as green. In fact we had the opposite, where most western governments did their best to utterly destroy nuclear and trying to give them every disadvantage. In Germany and other places like Belgium nuclear was planned to be phased out. In France in 2015 they literally decided to start shutting down large parts of their fleet by 2025. Had we spend the last couple decades using every possible means to push nuclear we would have seen a different result. Had we simply picked 1 type of reactor and with the EU planned to build 100 of those across Europe, we would have spent less money for a much better result. As France proved in the 70/80s, as soon as you mass produce these, you can do it quickly and cheaply. > And these days, it costs $10B just to build a nuclear plant before any electricity is generated, and that's just construction costs. UAE just build 4xARP-1400 for US$24.4 billion. That is in a country with no existing infrastructure and no knowlage base. Yes, if you build a one time specific reactor it might cost 10 billion, but as we can see in the UAE example, with each one you build them faster and cheaper. If Europe would just build many ARP-1400, soon the per unit cost would be very small. As France has shown in 70/80s, you can easily finish 5 reactors per year and build them within 5 years. If we as a society are actually serious and want to quickly move have 100% green grid, nuclear is the logical conclusion. Its not expensive, in fact its the opposite, its the most efficient. It has the least amount of resources used, the least amount of land, its the cleanest and the most reliable. Your whole perspective acts as if energy is some kind of free market, when in effect literally every where around the globe it actually isn't, it is about politics. Your narrow minded profit focused perspective is just ignorant of the reality of global energy policy. And even if it were true that nuclear was more expensive, for Switzerland it would still make sense. Other nations can use energy policy to put pressure on us. Having reliable local electricity at slightly higher cost is still beneficial.

somedude895 4y ago

> I really hope some party tries to reverse this and advocates for building a new modern nuclear plant. If you just don't vote Green/SP you're halfway there.