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."

Comments

Re:What will they replace it with?

[ChienAndalu]

French nuclear power.

Re:What will they replace it with?

[Chelloveck]

The two papers reported Leuthard backed continuing to use current nuclear plants until the end of their lifespans, not building any new ones, and expanding alternative energy sources such as water power.

Ah. So in other words they don't have a plan yet. Unless you count "hoping really hard that something revolutionary will happen before our existing nuke plants wear out" to be a plan.

Power

[fermion]

The Japan situation shows that nuclear power is safe, but not every contingency can be planned for, therefore there is always a small risk. The problem is one of managing risk and expectation. The nuclear industry, like all industries, wish to have minimum external burdens, wish to externalize as much costs as possible to the general public, so they like anyone else will lie to gain support. This will in the long run is always disastrous, but enough profits are made in the short run to make no difference to the private interests.

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.

Re:What will they replace it with?

[Samantha Wright]

"Perpetual finance" is usually called "sustainable growth." (ba-dum, tish!)

If only there had been a very large man with very big hands to stop capitalists from fucking up sustainability.

Re:Obviously...

[HungryHobo]

It's a very very valid point about solar 45 degrees+ from the equator.

Trying to run anything serious off batteries, flywheels or even pumped storage is barely sane overnight in places on the equator.

Trying to do the same during winter far from the equator is even less sane.

-Hydro is lovely but very limited unless you're in Brazil, the best sources are already being tapped already and it screws with the river ecosystem and makes vast tracts of land unusable.
-Wind is nice but is very unreliable, 20% of your grid is somewhat of an upper limit if you want to keep the grid any way stable.
-Solar is still a toy unless you talk to a solar panel salesman.
-Geothermal is glorious if you happen to be in iceland.
-Tidal is sorta ok until you get serious and then the greens hate it because it totally destroys coastal ecosystems.

And then there's fossil fuels which are terrible on almost every front.

finally there's nuclear which simply kills less people than getting your electricity from fossil fuels but the way it kills people- cancer happens to be how 25% of everyone dies anyway so if an accident happens which raises that to 25.001% then you get the blame for the other 25.000% and everyone will always have lots of people they knew who died of cancer and in their minds every single one of those deaths will be the fault of nuclear.

Re:What will they replace it with?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Exactly. This is the worst case scenario, whether you are in favour of nuclear power or against it: stopping all design and development of modern and much safer and cleaner nuclear plants (sure, not 100% safe nor 100% clean), whilst keeping the existing nukes running well past their designed lifetime... because the clean power source that was to replace them hasn't magically appeared, surprise, surprise.