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Switzerland Votes To Abandon Nuclear Power In Favor of Renewables (bbc.com)
Slashdot reader bsolar writes: Swiss voters approved a new energy strategy proposed by the government. Under this new policy no new nuclear power plant will be built and the five existing nuclear power plants will continue operating and will be shut down at the end of their operating life (expected to last about 20-30 years). The plan is to offset the missing nuclear energy production by renewables and lower energy consumption.
Though one-third of the country's power comes from nuclear energy, the BBC reports that more than 58% of the voters "backed the move towards greener power sources." One Swiss news site notes that "regions where the country's five nuclear reactors are situated rejected the reform with clear majorities."
Though one-third of the country's power comes from nuclear energy, the BBC reports that more than 58% of the voters "backed the move towards greener power sources." One Swiss news site notes that "regions where the country's five nuclear reactors are situated rejected the reform with clear majorities."
Er, no... The conservative German government is proposing a mix of renewable energy sources, and energy storage. By the mid 2020s.
So not only are you wrong about the proposal, you are judging it a decade too soon. By that logic the Hinkly Point C nuclear plant is shit, because it has emitted loads of CO2 and produced 0.0Wh of energy.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
German power grid is fine, thank you very much. It is one of most advanced in the world, a (small, for now) part of it even uses high temperature superconductors. Neither natural gas nor coal are expanding, matter of fact one of fairly recently built natural gas power plants was closed only a few years after it went online (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irsching_Power_Station) and there is only one new coal power station planned to be built, in Stade, I think so it can reuse parts of the former infrastructure of a shut down nuclear power plant. Also there are two new blocks planned as extensions for existing coal power plants (Niederaussem, Datteln) but that is it, and even these were meant as a more efficient replacement for older coal power stations that will be shut down en masse this and next year. How can you call it "hastely expanding" with a straight face? The 2020 target is a problem because German cars became a lot larger and heavier in the past 15 years, not because of coal power plants.
By the way, 100500 is a very Russian meme. I do get it, but I think "OVER 9000" is probably more understandable in the rest of the world.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
In my opinion, what closed the deal on this vote wasn't Fukushima.
We are currently close to shutting one of the five down due to age anyway. I believe it's one of the oldest reactor types in service currently (and I'm talking worldwide). Suddenly the company operating it says "Uh, no, we haven't prepared any funds for decommissioning the plant. That's your job!"
So not only is this whole thing a bit questionable security-wise, unless done absolutely right, it just goes to show that the private entities operating these things do not want or are not able to handle the responsibility involved. So after paying them for power for decades, now we're gonna have to foot the bill for cleaning them up, too.
And THAT pissed a lot of people off, I'm sure.
While I am pro modern nukes, I don't think they make sense in private hands and anyway, I find decentralized power generation to be much more secure in a variety of ways.
The author of that study, Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, is a known anti-nuclear figurehead. The study you cite has been widely panned by scientists, as can be seen with even just a cursory look at Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, India plans to build 10 new reactors;
http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/India_to_build_10_domestic_nuclear_power_reactors_999.html
Wow, you're so fucking wrong that you aren't even in the same time zone as right. Here's the relevant chart, in case you fail at clicking provided links as bad as you fail at using Google:
Energy Source - Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)
Coal – global average - 100,000 (41% global electricity)
Coal – China - 170,000 (75% China’s electricity)
Coal – U.S. - 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity)
Oil - 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity)
Natural Gas - 4,000 (22% global electricity)
Biofuel/Biomass - 24,000 (21% global energy)
Solar (rooftop) - 440 ( 1% global electricity)
Wind - 150 (2% global electricity)
Hydro – global average - 1,400 (16% global electricity)
Hydro – U.S. - 5 (6% U.S. electricity)
Nuclear – global average - 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)
Nuclear – U.S. - 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity)
Would have loved to format that better, but apparently the lameness filter thinks it's too much whitespace.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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Under transparent assumptions, we found that the total annualised cost (including capital, operation, maintenance and fuel where relevant) of the least-cost renewable energy system is $7-10 billion per year higher than that of the âoeefficientâ fossil scenario. For comparison, the subsidies to the production and use of all fossil fuels in Australia are at least $10 billion per year. So, if governments shifted the fossil subsidies to renewable electricity, we could easily pay for the latterâ(TM)s additional costs.
If only you had just got to that last paragraph. Oh well.
So they are saying that if Australia went all-out, they could reach a point where a 100% renewable system costs the same as the current fossil fuel one for a continual investment of about $20bn/year. Of course, that's an extreme example, no-one is suggesting that kind of aggressive timetable and total conversion.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC