31 ms·

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.

• philipwhiuk 4mo ago
  They can always sell the electricity
  • this_user 4mo ago
    It's far too expensive for that with how cheap renewables are making electricity. France is already struggling with that.
    • orwin 4mo ago
      Technically yes, but also no. The European electricity market have way, way to many rules and caveat to draw any conclusion, especially France with ARENH and other distortions. It's probably too expensive, because the best way to make nuclear cheap is to build it 'at scale', and here I mean, continuously. You need a company that will get a reactor out of the ground every year or so, continuously, to avoid loosing knowledge and build upon failures or success. I know three persons who work or used to work directly with nuke plants, one my age who is currently working in getting the newest french reactors off the ground, and two who are friends of my father, one who finished his career in China, and the other became a submarine welder. From the discussion I've listened to, and especially from the welder, the technical requirements are very high, knowledge and techniques have been lost and making nuke plants correctly nowadays on the first try would be a miracle (he is also very skeptical of the first wave of french reactors), you need to iterate and build knowledge, which isn't cheap.
    • Chaosvex 4mo ago
      Sure wish the UK could get some of this cheap renewable energy you're referencing.
    • mpweiher 4mo ago
      That turns out not to be the case. France is not "struggling", they are once again the #1 electricity exporter in Europe, with low-electricity prices, reliable supply, huge profits, and world-beating CO₂ emissions. Their newest energy roadmap has drastically reduced renewables build-out, while at the same including first 6 and then 8 new EPR2 reactors.
    • Moldoteck 4mo ago
      France is largest net exporter in EU and made about 5.4bn revenue last year from this export. It plans to build datacenters to increase profits further
• iso1631 4mo ago
  With little land usable for solar and wind I was thinking that Switzerland and Austria would need it more Edit: Not Norway - Doh!
  • marcyb5st 4mo ago
    I think he was referring to hydro with all the mountains it is actually prime real estate for dams.
  • sisve 4mo ago
    Norwegian here. - We have a lot of hydro, that are very cheap to produces and for some of the power plants we fill up water by using solar and wind when that is very cheap and generate power back when it's demand for it (meaning selling it expensive) -Norway export more then we are importing. But that could shift in the coming years. -Nuclear power are expensive, so with the current prices it do not make sense to have nuclear in Norway. Thought that could change (see point 2) - not sure what you mean by "little land usable", you can absolutely be correct. in terms of size we are bigger then Germany. But I'm not sure how much usable land there is vs other countries. We do not have that big population but it's spread out and no one wants a wind park in their neighborhood
    • iso1631 4mo ago
      Sorry not sure why I wrote Norway rather than Austria! Obviously Norway has massive amounts of offshore wind potential too
    • Moldoteck 4mo ago
      Imo Norway will have it https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/assessment-of-proposed-norwegian-smr-plant-to-begin https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/assessment-of-pr...
• nrds 4mo ago
  It is no coincidence that countries which need it least can unban it. Deindustrialization activists will focus their efforts on countries where the ban matters.
• _diyar 4mo ago
  Hard disagree. As a. swiss voter, this is close to my heart. 50% of all energy in the swiss economy is oil / gas. Of the remaining 50% (electricity), 2/3 are generated by hydro. The remaining ~1/3 by nuclear fission. Swiss electricity prices are sky-high, and the demand for electricity is going to continue to rise. To remain a competitive industrial economy, to transition away from oil/gas, and to offset any potential losses of hydro power as glaciers melt, nuclear + solar is the only real path for switzerland.
  • AtlasBarfed 4mo ago
    ...You guys have mountains everywhere, which means dirt cheap hydro energy storage for solar and wind? I'm a lftr enthusiast, but everyone needs to keep in mind that fission is just fundamentally economically non-competitive compared to solar and wind. And all those stories about fusion being right around the corner? Yeah, that won't be economically competitive either. I personally am not in favor of closing down existing fission nuclear plants. By the construction of new fission plants is an economic boondoggle: big, long time, cost overruns, more expensive. I had hopes for smrs to fundamentally change the economic game but they aren't. I just don't think that solid fuel rod nuclear can ever be economically competitive. I think I'm back to my original lifter enthusiasm, where lifter is able to use 90% plus of the core nuclear fuel and breed more of it from ultra cheap thorium, and is safer and can be scaled by design.... I think nuclear industry should spend another 10 to 20 years engineering developing a fundamentally economically competitive nuclear plant that will also give time for the price improvement, curves of solar wind and storage to stabilize. Because solar wind and storage still have a lot of runway for improvement between sodium ion batteries perovskites and just general improvements to wind rotors and general economies of scale
    • tribaal 4mo ago
      Mostly all of our potential for pumped hydro is already developed, and there is not a lot left to do for non-pumped hydro. We can't grow hydro at the required scale, and the usual problem with solar and wind (that we should develop nonetheless, don't get me wrong) apply: we can't produce enough power with those all year (winter nights need power too for heat pumps etc...)
• mrandish 4mo ago
  Yes, it may be more of a symbolic gesture for Switzerland's own needs but it's still good to correct the historical error of prohibiting a broad range of potentially viable approaches from ever being considered.
• marcyb5st 4mo ago
  I think we (as in Switzerland) are preparing for a future in which there is not much snow melt/precipitations to fuel hydro production year round. In fact, if the AMOC weakens/stops then there will be a drastic drop in precipitation across Europe and funnily enough maybe the temperature drop so much that the little snow there will be won't melt in big enough quantities. Of course this is just a ban lift, meaning that there are no concrete plans to build one or more, but if there is a need to move "fast" (nuclear is not, I know) at least there is one less hurdle. I sincerily hope we invest in other technologies, especially now that Sodium batteries seem on their way to solve grid level storage, but I don't necessarily see this as a bad move per se.
• jl6 4mo ago
  Small land area, mountainous, northerly latitude… it’s not that wind and solar won’t work, but I don’t think you can automatically compare costs to giga-scale solar farms in spacious and sparsely populated equatorial countries. Even if more expensive, nuclear will have a niche, and it’s madness to rule it out.
• Moldoteck 4mo ago
  Norway already wants to build nuclear. Austria still has worse emissions vs France/Sweden despite much more hydro...