Slashdot Mirror
Swiss To End Use of Nuclear Power
mdsolar writes "Energy minister Doris Leuthard is set to propose Switzerland gradually exits nuclear power, two Swiss newspapers reported on Sunday, citing sources close to the government. The multi-party Swiss government was expected to make an announcement on nuclear policy on Wednesday and may recommend an exit. Switzerland's five nuclear reactors generate about 40 percent of the country's electricity."
Avalanche power?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I feel neutral regarding this decision.
They are going full solar and just accepting not to have power during the nighttime hours.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The Slashdot headline is (predictably?) not accurate. The Swiss *ARE NOT* ending nuclear power. Rather, there is a proposal to gradually exit nuclear power by not building any new plants. Realistically, even if such a proposal was approved by the current government, given the growing energy needs of society and the shrinking supply / rising cost / environmental issues associated with fossil fuels, I don't see this happening. The current technologies of renewable energy simply cannot support the world's energy needs.
So what's it going to be? Continue with fossil fuels, or continue developing safer cleaner nuclear? Switzerland's five nuclear reactors generate about 40 percent of the country's electricity, and the needs will only grow. What can realistically replace that?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So an anti-nuclear story posted by a user named 'mdsolar' with a blog running very anti-nuclear posts. He also is involved in a business that rents solar systems to homes (http://www.blogger.com/profile/14124764472206647347).
Christ, Slashdot. Can you be a bit more opaque in posting biased stories?
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The more you split an atom, the farther it gets from gold.
No, but I do hear that they have ogres.
Why, an intricate and precise clock-work driven by a wind-up spring.
They should switch to Thorium reactors. Look up LFTR.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
The German-speaking majority, anyway. Reminds me of their minaret-banning.
Mountains mean (1) abundant hydroelectric opportunity (much of it currently unexploited, from what I've seen traveling there), (2) plenty of ridge lines with abundant wind (almost totally undeveloped at present), and (3) a likelihood of major geothermal resources (reservoirs of underground heat).
As for "shut the country down on calm/cloudy days," the wind never stops blowing throughout Switzerland all at once. There are many different microclimes, and major mountain ranges generate their own winds throughout the course of a day. It's not like Oklahoma, where you really can have a day where there's no wind anywhere (although days in Oklahoma days with both no wind anywhere and clouds everywhere are rarer than hens' teeth). And note I didn't even mention solar for Switzerland.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The big thing with energy is the externalization of costs to the general public, both real and opportunity. It is not really a conservative of liberal thing. When the BP oil well exploded in the Gulf or Mexico, conservatives all along the conservative Gulf Coast raised hell about the externalization of costs. Conservative Florida threw a fit even though conservative support approving drilling in the Gulf with minimal regulations. The coal industry is allowed to destroy public owned resources the could be better monetized by future generation with no recompense to future generations. And the nuclear industry is allowed to irradiate resources and create waste without a management plan. The Swiss reprocesses and stores the larger quantity, but less radioactive waste. Whether this faustian bargain will be acceptable in the long term is yet to be seen. What is true is that unlike out previous energy experiments in the industrial revolution will not be so easy to reverse. The benefit of nuclear energy is that most of the externalization is limited to the nation-state that benefits from the energy, unlike other sources in which the externalization is wolrd wide.
On a total cost basis other energy sources are viable. Switzerland has good solar irradiation potential. It also has mountains. During the day excess solar energy can be used to pump water up the mountain into a reservoir, and then run through a hydroelectric generator when needed. The same is true for wind. All without externalazing costs to future generations.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Kan to announce new energy program at G8
"Under the program, the cost of solar power generation will be slashed to one-third of the current level by 2020 and one-sixth by 2030. Japan hopes to install solar panels on virtually all rooftops. The plan also envisions the construction of large-scale offshore wind farms and the full-scale introduction of next-generation biomass fuels in the 2020s."
You must have missed a lot of news -- the Japanese disaster happened not because "the worst happened", but because of a failure to do a proper design. There was an article on the BBC last week about the fact that practically all German reactors will not withstand a direct hit from an airplane, despite the nuclear industry telling us they would. In Eastern Europe, multiple NPPs have been operating with fuel not intended for their reactors for nearly a decade, apparently resulting in trouble that wasn't publicized very much.
The largest risks associated with nuclear power aren't tsunamis and earthquakes, but corrupt governments and greedy plant operators, who usually come in tandems and configurations that are opaque and hard to control.
It's not clear yet if the tsunami was the main reason. Besides, one of the Swiss nuclear power plants is not in good shape. Also, there have been reports the controlling instance for nuclear safety is not independent enough (their boss getting money from the nuclear power plant operators and such).
Those are few and far between, even today. The Soviet Union lied to their own people about Cherynobyl. The Japanese government withheld messy truth until they were outed by foreign press.
I believe nukes can be safe, but most governments are not trustworthy enough to make that happen.
40%. Five reactors. 40%. No, seriously, what CAN replace that? Do the Swiss have some insight into energy storage we don't know about?
Keep running existing nuclear plants and not building new ones: is it really the better choice for safety?
We are told that one of the Swiss plants is an older, less safe design, similar to the one in Fukushiyama.
If newer safer designs actually exist, wouldn't it be safer to retire the old plants ASAP and build new ones?
I thought the Swiss bought power from France ('s nuclear reactors) at cheap off-peak rates and used the power to pump water into elevated reservoirs, then let the water back through the dams during peak times, selling the power back to the French for a profit.
On an operational cost basis, practically nothing competes with nuclear. The challenge is that it has a very high capital cost outlay and a long startup phase (~10y from decision to operational). It's still more efficient than fossil fuels, which is multiples better than any "renewable" source (save hydroelectric, which can be efficient, but is geographically very limited).
While I want solar to win, the cost to produce a panel in energy is more than the panel will generate (dollars for dollars over a typical/reasonable 25 year return period). Right now, in my area, solar companies are financing their own installations, and selling the power to the business on whose roof they've placed the panels. The cost? $0.30/kWh on a 30 year contract. That may be a bargain 15 years from now, but commercial rates are still just under $0.10/kWh right now. Even if you take your cost of money as 0%, energy costs will have to double every ten years to break even, and even in recent years the increase has accelerated to about half that (4% actual vs 7% breakeven).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I knew the thread would be a lot of Swiss bashing but I read it anyway. Anyone ever consider it might not be the best option for the Swiss long term? The Slashdot community has always embraced Nuclear as a one size fits all solution to all the world's energy needs and everything else has too many downsides to be practical. Nuclear of course having no real downside. Switzerland is a small country and dealing with the waste may be an issue. For Russia it's easy they have enough land to have multiple waste dumps the size of Switzerland. One accident and the entire country could be uninhabitable. Okay there's never been an accident in the history of the world. Oh wait there's been two major ones and a bunch of badly contaminated sites like Hanover and multiple ones in Russia. Given their lack of mines they are dependent on foreign countries for fuel so it's not much different than oil economically and they are probably equally dependent on foreign countries for long term waste storage. Say they can keep their plants going for another 20 years what are the odds of alternative solutions becoming practical? Solar is already more practical than it's given credit, neighboring Germany loves it. Given their mountains wind would be an excellent source but I'm sure there are scenery issues to deal with. The point is it's silly to condemn the Swiss for not drinking the nuclear Kool-Aide when it may not be ideal for their long term energy needs.
Of myself and all others directly impacted by this event:
FUCK YOU.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
This decision may be unbelievably shortsighted because, the risks and waste notwithstanding, nuclear power generation is still the most carbon-friendly method. Coal and natural gas fired plants produce tons of greenhouse gases. It is almost typical of politicians to engage in knee-jerk reactions without thinking of the potential socio-economic uphieval by large changes. I kind of had higher hopes for the Swiss government being more rational than ours in the U.S. but that just got thrown out the door. A better reaction would be to take a lesson learned from the Tokyo Electric Company and upgrade and examine safety measures.
this is a sane decision on part of the swiss!
Bundesrätin Doris Leuthard has no power above and beyond her six colleagues to make this decision, as you might expect this will be a very carefully considered decision and is unlikey to hold, unless other credible energy sources are found. Shale gas is unlikely due tho the Geology.
Hydroelectric, geothermal and new nuclear (Thorium) are in the mix.
The Swiss, unlike the Germans are not known for emotionalism, lack of planning or economic suicide.
The unofficial national motto is "Do it right the first time".
Will they stop that too?
There is no left and right side based on seating in the french assembly centuries ago:
wake up: http://politicalcompass.org/
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
There is a lot going on about nuclear plants in Germany. Maybe I missed it, but I did not read anything about it on Slashdot.
Germany plans to completely phase out off nuclear power over the next 11 years, and to massively build up renewable energy power plants.
Germany has 17 nuclear reactors, producing about 20% of total produced power. The seven oldest reactors were shut down after the Fukushima incident. Out of the remaining 10 reactors, 6 are currently shut down for scheduled mainenance, leaving only 4 nuclear reactors running.
Normally Germany is mostly exporting power. During the last 2 months the power import/export was about balanced, with 7-8 reactors running.
Italy turned off the last nuclear power plant in 1990. The Swiss are really not the only ones doing this. On a sidenote, Italy now imports lots of power from France, mostly through the nights. It is not that Italy could not produce enough power on its own, it is just that France nearly gives away the power through the night because of their high number of nuclear reactors that just keep running.
Related to this, Desertec should also be mentioned. This is a renewable energy project targeted at providing 15% of Europe's power. A lot of it should come from solar power plants in northern Africa.
The situation in Switzerland is actually pretty hilarious... People want to use less (or no) nuclear power, however:
- Proposals to allow more allow solar panels on roofs, or on the sides of office buildings - rejected.
- Proposals to put power-plants in rivers - rejected.
- Proposals for wind turbines - rejected.
Electricity just comes magically out of the plug, didn't you know?
In practice, one older and poorly placed nuclear plant will probably be shut down. The others will continue in service, because there just isn't any other realistic choice.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I happen to work with a gentleman from the former Soviet Union. His sister happened to be the chief engineer at Chernobyl, long since passed due to cancer from radiation.
Some son of a Communist Party bigwig created an experiment he tested at Chernobyl which eventually led to the disaster. The staff did not want to do it, but his father intervened. The father went to jail, without fanfare, after the incident.
So the government not only hid the problem, they caused it, in the Soviet Union's case. Granted it wasn't a widespread government decision.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I keep reading quite childish comments about the 'unknown' Switzerland. Get informed please. I find the exiting statement very interesting and I strongly wish they formalize it with a parliament decision. Nuclear power is clearly not the answer , expecially for such a small country where even a single site failure would compromise the entire nation. They have and will have more hydroelectric power plants and solar, and that's it, same strategy as Germany and Spain. It can be done, and the naysayers are just the politicians and industrials with their hands deep into the nuclear exploitation wealth.
At first I thought you said TSA! I was just about to pull my pants down.
Just cancel any tours by Dethklok......
...is consigning themselves to the trash heap of history. Full Stop.
I believe that if we had a more accurate picture of the consequences of trying to move to expensive energy-diffuse sources (wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, biofuels, etc), that we'd be thinking twice about our aversion to nuclear fission. The Green Party (of which I am a member) imagines a renewable future, and their platform explicitly forbids all nuclear development (including fusion). I think this is a disastrous and useless policy: it avoids technology best suited for drastically reducing waste by converting it into fuel (imagine radio-toxicity reduced to mere hundreds of years as opposed to thousands- the disposal problem essentially becomes a non-issue).
This is not a fantasy. Foundations for this technology were developed back in the 60's at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and today we call this the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR or even Molten Salt Reactor). The advantages are numerous: inherent stability (no meltdown possible), abundant fuel (thorium is 3-4 times as abundant as uranium), low start-up requirements (less than a couple tons of fissile material is needed- critical for scalability), proliferation resistant (U-233 is always contaminated with radioactive U-232), more than 100 times as efficient as the current fuel cycle, drastically reduced waste due to efficiency, considerably lower costs due to many factors, especially safety, and the list goes on. We need to be asking ourselves why we are not aggressively pursuing this promising technology. Cheap abundant energy is our best choice for both securing our future and dramatically reducing the prevalence of poverty throughout the rest of the world. The ability for our economy to provide the services we need is utterly dependent on energy.
In case you are not convinced that this path is necessary to avoid the most dire consequences of global economic collapse, I suggest checking out:
Energy lecture by a theoretical physicist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeGijutBSx0
Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air: http://www.withouthotair.com/
Advantages of LFTR: http://energyfromthorium.com/lftradsrisks.html
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/
Our energy future is not a trivial concern. If we make the right choices, we will revitalize our economy, avoid the worst consequences of our ignorance, eliminate poverty, and live comfortably for thousands, if not millions of more years. Can you think that far ahead?
The problem is that we have no case where we can see the after affect.
Polution will go up as well as other abuses to the environment.
It is sort of like the intelegent design group. They extrapolate with their logic utter junk.
If they had their way in a school for about 10 years, in the end children are smart enough to figure out that it is all junk,
and we would have a precedent.
G
Public, media and politicians in Germany seem to expect the last nuclear plants to shut down during the first half of the 20s.
Originally the current government planned to extend service of more recent plants up to 2036 but after the Fukushima incident those plans have been cancelled and discussion revolves around a phase-out that would be finished 2022.
... and unlike Switzerland Germany actually has a lot of heavy industry that relies on cheap electricity.
Taking Sides, no. Taking Gold smelted from teeth......yes.
I think you meant trolls.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Why would they want the infinite expense and risks involved with current nuclear?
If nuclear risks are infinite, then hydro risks are at least 50*infinity! 94% of deaths related to energy accidents were caused by hydro, thanks to many catastrophic dam bursts. To be "fair", most of those deaths were caused by the Shimantan dam burst in China, which killed 171,000 people... but you never hear about that one, do you?
And the people who say it...
Just remember that a lot of people HAVE and WILL be impacted by this. This might be an academic debate for most of the world, but for a minority of millions, there are real consequences. I have had to hear various "professionals" at safe distances claim that there was no meltdown, no risk of radioactivity leakage, and continue to downplay the event as much as possible until confirmed facts of the contrary made it out. I have friends with small children who have decided to stay as a consequence, only to find out later that they had been lied to.
I have lost a lifestyle that took me a decade and half of hard work to earn. I will never be compensated for this loss. If you want a rational discussion regarding this technology, first make sure that there is a rational system in place to cover the risks involved (I would have purchased "fallout" insurance, had it been available). Also, stop the downplaying of events until this situation really is clear (which will probably be years from now). For the people who are having to decide to leave or stay, it really makes the pro-nuke side seem like a bunch of sociopaths when they downplay only to be proven wrong by the facts later. If you really think the situation is not bad, quietly start buying up Japanese stocks (and contact me if you are interested in real estate).
P.S. I was for nuclear power until Fukushima screwed me over . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Probability * Cost. The probability may be way lower for "extreme circumstances", but the cost is so high that the expected cost is actually quite significant.
After this event, the probability in the above equation must be dramatically increased. Your argument is out dated, and this crisis is still ongoing. At this point, I would give my left testicle to go back in time and make Fukushima a coal power plant . . . Are you as committed to nuclear power as I am against it?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The Encyclopedia Britannica lists the area of the Sahara as 8.6 million km^2 (I choose that because Wikipedia's is far larger... 9.4 million km^2). Let's assume that half of the Sahara dessert is inhabitable (which I believe is a gross overestimation). Even then, 2% of the remaining area is still 86,000 km^2, or roughly the size of South Carolina, Austria, or New Zealand. Just because it's an extremely small proportion of the Earth's surface doesn't mean it's not still fantastically huge.
If we want to look in man-made terms, we can just look at the urbanized areas of the United States. 86,000 km^2 is equivalent to the areas of New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA; Chicago, IL-IN; Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD; Miami, FL; Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX; Boston, MA-NH-RI; Washington, DC-VA-MD; Detroit, MI; Houston, TX; Atlanta, GA; San Francisco-Oakland, CA; Phoenix-Mesa, AZ; Seattle, WA; San Diego, CA; Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN; Saint Louis, MO-IL; Baltimore, MD; Tampa-Saint Petersburg, FL; Denver-Aurora, CO; Cleveland, OH; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR-WA; San Jose, CA; Riverside-San Bernardino, CA; Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN; Virginia Beach, VA; Sacramento, CA; Kansas City, MO-KS; San Antonio, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Milwaukee, WI; Indianapolis, IN; Providence, RI-MA; Orlando, FL; and Columbus, OH combined . This is the equivalent of constructing the entirety of the US Interstate Highway System out of PV cells, except building the road 1 km wide and 10,000 km longer.
Wait, this is SlashDot. 2% of the uninhabitable Sahara is equivalent to about 440,000 Libraries of Congress (using 2.1 million ft^2 for the area of the building).
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
No we don't. There are plenty of applications that do not need constant availability but do need a lot of power. In fact, managing buffers is one of them. It is not THAT bad to wait a day or two to fill up your pool, or to pump the surplus of rain away (in the latter case, there is guaranteed enough wind to do so). You could even have a regular and an irregular grid for these purposes. But the OMG we have to keep heading for the brick wall exactly as we do now is just dangerous nonsense.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
IF you want to make nuclear power as save as possible it's not profitable anymore.
Only by accepting a devastation like Fucko'jima is possible and with a lot of subsidies a plant is profitable.
Giving them permission to run until 2020 and 2040 I don't call "exiting". Hell, I will be retired by then!
They may be opting not to have potential nuclear poisoning devices humming in their backyard - but it cant be !!! how can a society choose caution, wisdom and security over * gasp * profits !?!?!?!
......
if we build our nuclear reactors safe enough, they would
i quit. the above sentence is not possible to complete, even in the most extreme sarcastic way. there is no complicated structure which could withstand a near 9 magnitude earthquake, and any person who would play the 'we are safe until a megadisaster hits our nuclear facility' gamble is a witless moron. no - i really mean moron. morondom is not erased with higher education.
Read radical news here
One of the huge advantages of nuclear fuel, is that, if you are using it *efficiently* (e.g. recycling it in something like an Integral Fast Reactor), one ton of fuel is the equivalent of millions of tons of coal or oil.
What this means is that a country can buy a *relatively* small quantity of Uranium or Thorium, and it might represent 100 years supply of energy. You couldn't easily store 100 years worth of coal - it would be the size of 10 large mountains or something, and would be crazy expensive to buy and store.
100 years worth of thorium or uranium would be large and expensive, but quite manageable for a government or large corporation to do. It would be much cheaper and much smaller than coal.
This means that you can have long negotiating cycles. There's also quite a few countries with Uranium (and, I've heard it said that there's probably a lot of undiscovered Uranium out there, as it hasn't been prospected for anywhere nearly as aggressively as coal and oil), and as the other poster who replied before me pointed out, almost every country has Thorium.
Part of the problem for supply of oil, coal, etc is that we can't buy it faster than it is consumed, and we can't easily store large surpluses (there is, of course, in the U.S. at least, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but even that is really pretty small - I think a few months' worth of supply?). This makes us very vulnerable to market swings in price.
With Nuclear Fuel, if you've got 20 or 50 years' supply already on-hand, you've got a nice long negotiating cycle in which to get sellers to lower the price. Then, you buy more when the price is right.
Bonus: any country which has already been running nuclear power programs for a couple decades, most likely already has hundreds of years' supply of Uranium in the form of "Spent Nuclear Fuel". What we call "Nuclear Waste", at least here in the U.S. still has about 98-99 percent of its potential energy unused.
So, here in the U.S., we're sitting on, very roughly, 50 years of nuclear waste, which should be able to give us 50 years * 99, worth of energy. OK, that's a bit of a simplification - if we greatly increased our annual production of nuclear power compared to what we produced in the past, you might cut that in half or a quarter (possibly even more). Say anywhere from 500-4000 years of nuclear fuel, depending on how much we increase our nuclear power production.
There's also "depleted uranium", which could be added to the fuel mix in some of the "recycling reactor" designs (the technical name for a recycling reactor is a "fast breeder reactor" - which is a scary sounding name, but they aren't more dangerous than a "thermal reactor", which is what today's reactors are). The above estimate about using nuclear fuel more efficiently also is based upon using the spent nuclear fuel in a fast breeder.
If you use depleted Uranium in a fast breeder reactor, you can again extended the fuel supply by another huge amount. For every ton of Enriched Uranium fuel that has been produce, about 6.5 tons of depleted uranium is produced. Using that in a breeder reactor, again using the 'simplified' estimating approach above, gives us something like 50 years * 6.5 * 100 = 32, 500 years' supply. If you assume we quadruple nuclear power production (so that supply is cut by 1/4), that still gives us something like 8000 years' supply of fuel.
Coal and gas have been running advertising campaigns trying to reassure people we have 100-300 years' supply (about 100 in the case of gas - and that's at *current* consumption rates, which look set to double or triple if we start building a lot of gas power plants and gas-backed solar/wind farms; closer to 200-300 years for coal).
Nuclear is the only fuel-based energy source which can credibly claim around 10,000 years' supply, *at the very minimum*. Solar and Wind, of course, can claim energy supply until the Sun dies; I have some hope solar and wind (and necessary supporting technologies like grid-scale energy storage systems) can mature to help provide part of our energy needs, but I just don't see them, based on the current technology, providing more than about 20 percent of our power.
I cut myself once with a pocket knife so I threw away every knife, scissor, pencil sharpener, letter opener, and paper in the house so I would never get cut again!. Turns out you can get a cardboard cut so I got to throw away that now too.
The risk of an accident is low, but the consequences for the Swiss would be high. An 80 kilometer exclusion zone would cover over 10% of the nation's land mass.
There is one good thing about this story. I have finally seen the tag "idiocracy" applied to a country that isn't my own. Maybe there is hope yet that here on Slashdot it can be cool to hate a country that isn't the USA!
Love sees no species.
Switzerland and any other country can generate power by using GRAVITY CONTROL as the most economical and efficient way. The Technology of the Flying Saucer, discovered and patented, will be used. Rejected by Nasa , as it would make the Rocket Industry obsolete, it is now available for power generation.. These big spheres under a Saucer are the Propulsion Units (PU) . They lift a 10 or 100 ton vehicle off the ground and beyond witha very small amount of energy. A PU can also (e.g.) lift a 100 ton weight in a Silo 300 feet to maximum height. When the weight is released it can be used to activate the generator(s). Two Silos would make a Power Station, working alternately. Power at 1 cent per Kilowatt is feasible. No fuel needed after start-up. A Power station would cost a fraction of a Nuclear Instalation. They can be Micro-, Mega-, or Giga The PUs would be LEASED to pay the investors and Tax Man. Read about the invention at One Terminal Capacitor Joseph... Contact at 147 Burcher Rd, Ajax, Ontario, Canada, L1S 2R6