Swiss cabinet agrees to phase out nuclear power

[Uraniun235]

Not surprised given the Germans are planning - planning! - on building new coal-fired power plants to replace their atomic plants.

Also does not spell well since 40% or more of Sweden's power is nuke generated and there only alternatives are coal. Geothermal is possible but terrain means unless you want to give up a city or two it means coal plants.

What a great safe improvement.

Sweden is not Switzerland.

[Darth Tanner]

Isn't the Swiss government supposed to do a national referendum on things like this?

In the past they have, they have not for this which means any future government can simply change its mind on this issue especially as there were plans for another two reactors to be built. Previous polls seem to indicate around a 60-40 trend in support for existing level of nuclear power. To be honest I don’t see politicians keeping to their commitment to close the reactors as the land is not that useful afterwards as anything but a space for another nuclear reactor without very expensive and lengthy decontamination work.

They also have a shitload of mountains; if you bury a nuclear plant deep in the heart of the Swiss Alps, a meltdown has a very limited amount of area it can contaminate.

That isn’t exactly convenient for construction costs, maintenance or laying the cables from the mountain to where you need the power. It also raises the risk that any bad weather or avalanches will cut those power cables and cut off your power plants. Not to mention transmission losses incurred or the difficulty of getting all the water to cool your reactor up a mountain.

but where does this anti-nuke trend leave more modern designs?

I doubt that most environmentalists would know or care about the differences since they contain the word nuclear and are therefore uber dangerous.

Not surprised given the Germans are planning - planning! - on building new coal-fired power plants to replace their atomic plants.

Coal is cheap, if you’re going to abandon nuclear you have the choice of coal or gas which if fucking expensive. It does kind of invalidate building all those renewables but then most countries energy policies have never been sensible and wasting billions on solar and wind just to spew the carbon out of the coal plant in the next town is sadly typical.

[D.Turtle]

Not surprised given the Germans are planning - planning! - on building new coal-fired power plants to replace their atomic plants.

Thats wrong. The plan is to phase out older coal plants and nuclear and replace them with renewables, natural gas, and maybe newer, more efficient coal plants - maybe with coal capture. There is still a lot of discussion ongoing about exactly what mix, but for example, this is what the CSU is planning in Bavaria:

Kernenergie = nuclear, Erdgas = natural gas, Mineralöl = oil, Kohle = coal, sonstiges = other, wasser = water, biomasse = biomass, wind = wind, photovoltaik = solar.

But I'm sure that everybody in Germany's governments everywhere (and the Swiss) is completely oblivious to any potential problems and will just run headlong into catastrophe. Its completely unthinkable that maybe, just maybe, governments will actually use the expertise at their disposal and actually work out a workable pathway to nuclear-free, low CO2 output power generation.

[Mr Bean]

Also does not spell well since 40% or more of Sweden's power is nuke generated and there only alternatives are coal. Geothermal is possible but terrain means unless you want to give up a city or two it means coal plants.

Sweden is not Switzerland.

Yeah [R_H] and Skimmer already corrected me on my wrong country usage in my first post, I meant Switzerland which is still 40% but wrote Sweden so welcome to being third.

[Skgoa]

This may be a stupid question, but where does this anti-nuke trend leave more modern designs? I'm thinking things like the Hyperion units, or thorium-cycle reactors, or pretty much anything Wikipedia lists here.

And all of those things are pipe dreams at the moment.