This still has to pass with the people in a referendum.

The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic.

Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full from the melting of snow and the sun is shining), and much less so in the winter. We can still improve 10 to 20% our hydro production, but that's it. All the water sheds are already well used and rely on our glaciers to replenish, which will become less predictable with climate change.

We shouldn't completely closing the doors to all forms of nuclear technology. Obviously, we can't build blindy without any considerations. But we may need it on the second half of the century, especially if we are going to electrify all forms of transport. We can't be buying France's nuclear energy all the time.

Two things to keep in mind when thinking about nuclear

1) Has the lowest deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

2) Any country that is not US absolutely needs to invest in nuclear technology. This is for your own security. In addition to providing energy security, it also provides physical security (with a bit more work).

Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to:

1) Direct attacks

2) Sanctions which destroy your economy and quality of life of your citizens

3) Fossil fuel disruptions, either intentional or malicious

With nuclear + solar, you have an unbeatable combination of all forms of security. Every country wastes lots and lots of money on many useless initiatives. Nuclear might seem costly, but security is somewhat important.

The rest of the world on clean energy will ultimately help people in US, because there will be less foreign adventures and oil will be a lot cheaper when all that demand is destroyed, supply chains are not disrupted by these wars.

This is going to be a huge waste of time and money until we realize that building new nuclear power plants will be too expensive and too late, since we'll have figured out a renewable energy concept that'll handle the load by then. Instead we could also just join a French project, who have way more experience.

We should focus on extending our hydro power storage capacity instead.

There will be a referendum anyways, so I think it's unlikely the ban will actually be lifted.

It's a world-wide competition to generate the most expensive electricity! The record is currently held by Vogtle in Georgia US, but Ontario Canada is trying to take the crown by spending $500B on nuclear.

I wish Italy did the same.

We still have to deal with the consequences of a referendum hold not so long after che Chernobyl accident which made it illegal to build and operate nuclear power plants.

Nuclear energy is really the energy of the future, fission still has bright days ahead of it. the startup market for SMRs is going to boom once the core challenges will have been solved, sure that we will see many ETH founders go into that world

Like the F-35 fighter jet, this is just another victory for lobbyists in the industry who will be able to siphon public money into over-budget, deadline busting white whale projects that will never recoup its costs.

Especially nuclear. It is now economically non-viable.

The pro-nuclear propaganda in this discussion reminds me of the tobacco companies that claimed smoking was harmless, or of Monsanto, which insisted that its pesticides were safe, and so on. It is always the same pattern: obvious facts are denied, doubts are exaggerated, legitimate concerns are downplayed, and blatant lies are spread. I wonder how many undercover lobbyists for the nuclear industry are active here on HN.

Switzerland, Norway and Austria are probably the country that needs nuclear the less, but anything to start the discussion in other European countries is good.

Probably not economically viable in Switzerland though.

I'm amazed that the main debate on how clean or dangerous nuclear energy is still circles around the plants themselves and storage of spent energy. I believe that glaring oversight here is that enriched nuclear fuel doesn't grow on trees. Somehow no one ever seems to talk about how efficient and clean the mining of these rare earths is and in which countries that happens. Nuclear being a clean energy is a myth as far as I know. Actually relevant information would be how the necessary mining for uranium etc. compares to coal. I suspect it is only slightly better

Citizens should take note that no nuclear plants are ever built without many billions in state loans and guarantees.

It's not a cheap source of electricity, it's a way for someone to get money from taxpayers to subsidize their business.

Switzerland seems like a country where they wouldn't have trouble hiring enough very responsible serious people capable of running nuclear plants. Aside from being able to acquire fuel is there any reason they are not near 100% nuclear?

All countries should also invest in nuclear submarines, not just for security, but also as a source of power.

Imagine having ports all around the country where a sub can plug in and provide power. Instead of building massive ports to ship stored energy (coal, oil, gas) from somewhere else in the world, its much easier to just have a plug in port and access nuclear energy.

All countries have their own fleet, but can also tap into a global fleet. There is a small problem with clean energy, long term seasonal storage and disruptive events. Germans have a word for it. Dunkelflaute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute

With EV batteries as an enormous reservoir of energy storage (dump all excess production when electricity is priced negative; use the EV batteries instead of peaker plants) and nuclear subs, the transition to clean energy can be complete.

Lots of people in this thread look at this as a pro/anti-nuclear debate. But few people consider the fact that the first election from the said nuclear plant will be produced 25 years from now in the very best case. Plus, nuclear plants have a huge cooling problem during summertime.

A long-form exploration of energy in Switzerland for those interested:

https://www.heidi.news/explorations/black-out-le-talon-d-ach...

Everyone here is arguing about solar vs nuclear like it's an either-or thing. everyone in the energy industry (who's not biased) knows that a healthy mix of different fuel types depending on various factors is the way to go.

Combined with Italy's change of heart, hopefully approved and put into law before July 2026, this is going to mark the revival of nuclear energy in Europe. Here for it

that's just lifting the ban and is pure virtue signaling. none of the electricity producers in switzerland actually want build nuclear power plants, because they are way too expensive.

This is at best the concept of a vibe shift. Even if they started sprinting now, it would be 20 years before anyone would see the results of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear is so much more expensive than solar and wind that building one is certain to raise electricity prices.

There is no prosperity without stable and cheap energy.

Great news, just hoping the people understand this as well.

Don't worry about nuclear waste. Its a solved problem. Musk can take it with him on his weekly trips to Mars which he should be starting anytime soon.

Whether people like it or not, nuclear power is the path forward for the foreseeable future; at least until nuclear fusion becomes a reality. With incoming AI/automation, ya’ll need all the power ya can get.

Probably in preparation for Thorium Reactors which the Danes and the Swiss are currently working on.

It is depressing reading hacker news threads on nuclear power because of just how misinformed so many people still are. These things are all true, and it's on the reader for not knowing:

- nuclear power is expensive by choice. It is not inherent to nuclear power

- nuclear waste is not a problem

- nuclear energy comes in many forms. Not only high pressure reactors

- we are all going to be poorer, and live in a more polluted, higher CO2 world, because of all the people that choose to not inform themselves about the truth on nuclear

- the harms from radiation exposure are mostly precisely zero, and require large exposure to be non-zero

There really is no excuse for people to be misinformed. If you actually want to understand this issue start here, but there are many other sources out there that can also help:

gordianknotbook.com

Or the substack:

substack.com/@jackdevanney

end non proliferation rules. its blocking nuclear adoption way more than environmental movements ever did esp in developing countries. and imo its better for a lot of countries to have nuclear weapons than just a few, if they have to exist at all.

Keeping the option open seems prudent. The hard part is winter reliability, not summer generation.

Switzerland is a small country. 3000 square kilometers of the earth is uninhabitable because of nuclear accidents. That would be almost 1/10 of Switzerland. Probably not a good idea.

They have a pretty small population, but wind will likely be intolerable because it will harm views[0]. Solar requires surface area as well. So that leaves hydro, which they'll have to pump during the summer months to ensure they have coverage for winter, or nuclear. Or fossil fuels, of course. Gas is still probably optimal for them. I suppose that's the nature of things. We all care very much about the climate, but we do care about our views more.

0: I personally like the look of wind turbines but I understand many don't. The appearance is likely why the Trump administration canceled such projects.

While I'm sold on the fact that modern nuclear can be built & administered safely in the face of natural disasters, and is a net good environmentally, I'm worried about corporate cronyism's corrosive effects on safety (a la Fukushima) and future instability in the form of cornered animals (e.g. Putin, Trump) acting erratically by bombing civilian infrastructure.

Tangentially related: the Swiss built a research-focused nuclear reactor in a cavern. It had a meltdown in 1969, and they were able to keep the decontamination/decommissioning efforts to a minimum by just entombing the thing in concrete.

Honestly, so long as the water table isn't too close, that's not a terrible place to put a nuclear reactor.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucens_reactor

my summarized thoughts when reading through this comment section and being swiss myself - have y'all ever heard of solar and wind[0]? i know that battery storage is a challenge, but hey, we constantly glaze ourselves as having great universities, lots of wealth, stability, precise engineering etc.

so let's put our strength into battery storage. invest in research towards it. research it ourselves. build out renewable energy. sponsor such things in foreign places we steal, ehrm, i mean, trade resources from.

this whole nuclear debate feels like a defeat. well, we tried, seems too hard, let's got back to ye' olden times.

i am also aware that we use french nuclear power as a backbone constantly and still boast as being so advanced and green, but that's also helping my point.

[0]or fusion, or just a different way to boil water without creating waste we have to bury in a mountain and think about how we want to make sure that nobody every accidentally opens the toxic caves in the next thousands of years.

RemindMe! -20 year

Best way to provide power to a population over 10 million

fantastic!

...but nobody wants to build it: https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/schweiz/die-schweiz-kann-wied...

Excellent.

One of the little gems the Russians pulled off in the twenty aughts when they were flooding nonprofits in the USA with dirty money was hijacking the green movement to promote fracking. (Because surely ANYTHING is better than those dastardly electrons or whatever the fuck radiation is made of)

Switzerland, unlike the USA, seems capable of safely operating these plants, and with advances in breeder technology new plants doesn't nessecarily mean new mining operations, which often are quite harsh on the surrounding area.

Those energy conglomerates are really desperate for public money aren't they? Sorry guys, solar and wind are cheaper

AI made this inevitable. Every country will follow.

Swiss will get nukes, denmark will get nukes, sweden will get nukes, finland will get..poland, ukraine, germany, armenia, georgia, armenia, turkey, vietnam, japan, south korea, emirates all gonna get, saudi already got.. [this list is incomplete, you can help to complete this list by doing a empire]. Ironically during the cold war a ton of countries went and became almost nuclear powers. Now thos world is so back baby and the reality denial and loud noises do nothing. Almost as if this plot device never had any connection to anything.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p6uxLHWVYRg&t=534s