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.
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 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."
The problem is wind can't ensure baseload power. You can say "it never stops blowing" - but how low does it dip? Because that's the minimum you have to assume *will* happen. Which means you have to make up the loss with something else. It's practical for generators with a short startup time like coal and gas, but if you want to go no carbon then you pretty much can't even bother with wind at the moment. There's no practical, grid-scale load-levelling technology.
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?
So that is why the Dutch powered their golden age mainly with wind power. Wind + mountains = buffer. Just pump up water and attach the hydro generators to your precious grid. Gee, I wonder how mankind has ever accomplished anything before there even was a grid.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Have you noticed that the Swiss mountains are kind of a signature thing for them - are you willing to account for tourism losses in your cost-per-kWh calculations? Viewshed from the top of the Swiss alps is pretty broad. Plus, it means isntalling and servicing them from those physically remote, but visually omnipresent locations.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well, given that Switzerland has many mountains, storing the energy shouldn't be that much of a problem. It's a proven method: In times with much energy, pump water up, and in times of little energy, use that pumped-up water to generate electricity again. Both pumps and water turbines can be quickly switched on and off, therefore they are ideal for this purpose.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Of myself and all others directly impacted by this event:
FUCK YOU.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Wind is usually able to claim ~10--15% capacity factor for firm baseload purposes.
And demand control (and dynamic demand) hasn't really been tried thoroughly yet.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
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.
Baseline power is a pro-nuke myth. If a country has reservoirs, and the swiss have many, they will even buy cheap electricity in the night and sell it at peak load prizes. It's a non-issue.
Do you have any idea how many windmills it would take to replace just one nuclear power plant?
There's nothing really standing in the way of dynamic demand control in a fundamental way. We do not have the infrastructure for it yet, but given that they phase out their plants over at least a decade, there is ample time to build the infrastructure.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Mankind didn't have to support billions of lives at that point.
We absolutely need power to drive the world as we know it - if we decide to abolish nuclear power we also need to go back to old way of life which means a couple of billion of lives will need to be sacrificed.
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".
The pumped water method can't provide power for days on end. The total generation capacity is typically measured in minutes and is used to smooth out known peaks in demand.
For example: In the UK they know that a million people make a cup of tea at certain times of the day (eg. right after a popular TV show ends...) so they know to switch on the pumped water system a couple of minutes before that peak appears to smooth things out.
Statistically speaking, the calm day *will* appear, even if it's only once per decade. You can't expect the country to shut down, ever. Some people will literally die without a constant power supply.
No sig today...
This is Switzerland! You know, the country of 7.8 million people? With a population density of 188 people / sq. km? In the mountains?
Hardly the place you'd expect to worry about having to support billions...
Let them find a local solution that works for them. Those of us in other places have other options. One radioactive size doesn't necessarily fit all, you know...
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.
So once in a decade, they'll buy electricity from another country. No big deal. It's not as if they were surrounded by enemies.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
if we decide to abolish nuclear power we also need to go back to old way of life which means a couple of billion of lives will need to be sacrificed.
I know that this sounds horrible and monstrous, but we could do with a couple of billion lives less.
(sorry)
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.
There are many different microclimes, and major mountain ranges generate their own winds throughout the course of a day.
Have you seen the ridge lines? The ones that are easily accessible are generally devoted to skiing areas. The ones that aren't easily accessible... Do you know how expensive it is to fly in a helicopter crew to a mountain ridge, heli-lift in all the equipment, and then try to build everything out before the first snow hits? Not to mention that snow is bad news for wind turbines. You could potentially build wind turbines in the valleys, but then you're blocking the place where you want to build roads and trains. You could build them in areas that are off the center of valleys, but then you're not getting optimal windpower.
As for hydropower, someone else explained it already: the warmer temperatures mean less mountain run off in the summer, and water is becoming an issue. Finally, in a country where a lot of valleys have already been settled, building major dams means uprooting a lot of people, and significant loss of tourism for the area.
Switzerland has some major issues generating energy from anything but coal, nuclear and solar.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
Where did you get the "measured in minutes" from? Sure, it's not a good for multiple days, but it did bring Switzerland quite a surplus when trading electricity. There is a 1000 MW station in Switzerland.
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.
Gee, I wonder how mankind has ever accomplished anything before there even was a grid.
Is this a trick question?
First we burned huge swathes of forestland for firewood, then we died in our sleep by burning coal indoors, until eventually our society hunted the whales to near extinction.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Just cancel any tours by Dethklok......
I didn't mean 'single digit' minutes, I meant more like 30-45 minutes.
From what I've seen on TV the the capacity of these stations is nominally: "As long as it takes for the proper power stations to reach full output", i.e. they're there to take up the slack, not as a primary power source.
No sig today...
Not to mention that they're covered in snow and ice most of the time - hardly ideal operating conditions for a wind turbine.
No sig today...
...is consigning themselves to the trash heap of history. Full Stop.
As for hydro, there are good reasons why they have never set up many plants.
There are currently more than 500 hydro plants in Switzerland, which account for 55% to 60% of the energy consumption.
Take a look at that graph - there are plenty of times when wind output is zero. And those windmills are spread over a large, geographic area that has some of the most consistent winds in the Pacific Northwest (I'm a life-long Washington State resident, born and raised here). If you cannot maintain a decent base-load in the Columbia River gorge, you're not going to do it pretty much anywhere.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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
Of the two main pumped storage facilities in the U.K. Dinorwig takes six hours to deplete it reservoir and Cruachan takes 22 hours, but has to keep 12 hours for black start of the grid should it ever be needed. There was a proposal to build another significant facility on Exmoor, but with the dash for gas it was abandoned as not being required. Gas fired power stations can respond much quicker than nuclear and coal to changes in demand.
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...
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).
Stop lying. The energy payback period is one to four years.
Furthermore, most of the energy is used to make the aluminium frame, which is fully recyclable into new panels at end of life.
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!
Gee, I wonder how mankind has ever accomplished anything before there even was a grid.
They didn't accomplish a modern industrial society without a grid. You need readily available power or you're stuck in the 19th century. And any "golden age" of the Dutch was less interesting that they are now, with modern infrastructure, allowing them to do far more than their predecessors could.
Ahhh yes the Dutch golden age where everyone had a smart phone and plasma TV and all their vehicles ran on tulips.
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).
That's only true if you put the panel on your roof yourself, and further it is only true in places without net metering. I guarantee you that implementing net metering will fix this problem entirely. Solar panels could pay back the energy cost of their construction in seven years in the 1970s and thin film panels are under three years today.
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.
Either commercial rates are too low or residential rates are too high.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
How about reading the thread?
GP is talking about *dutch* and mankind as a whole needing to abolish nuclear power.
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!
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.
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.
That may be the issue - you cannot "schedule" your wind turbine output like you can a hydro or nuclear plant. Storage is a big issue (although I do have a pending patent for a special type of magnetically suspended flywheel that could help with that). Even when distributed over a fairly large geographic area you end up with times when output is nil, or it's simply way too high for use, and storage methods (such as pumped water during summer) aren't really available.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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