
Switzerland votes against strict timetable for nuclear power phase out - rbc
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38120559
======
StreamBright
It would be extremely silly to stop using nuclear power. What we need is a
passive safety system and type of reactor that cannot go critical and does not
produce long lasting isotopes. Surprisingly, all of these are ready from the
technology point of view, the only reason not to build them is financial.
There are also plans to use the waste of older reactor models in the new gen
IV type reactors and produce isotopes that last only few decades instead of
few millenia. This would solve the biggest issue with older reactors, having a
large amount of very active products that we need to store safely for a long
time.

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-
nuclear-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-
power/)

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/01/16/thorium-
fu...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/01/16/thorium-future-
nuclear-energy/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Advantag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Advantages_and_disadvantages)

~~~
woodpanel
> It would be extremely silly to stop using nuclear power

That's what a minority in Germany said, before the majority voted against
nuclear power. Hence the energy clusterf __k Germany is now in.

Germany, a country with almost non-existent seismic activity killed its
nuclear energy future because a tsunami happened in Fukushima. [1] It's not
just "silly" it is that much silly, that sooner or later the prohibition will
be repealed out of necessity. And the same fate would have happened to the
Swiss plebiscite's result if it were a win.

[1] "voted against because of Fukushima" is technically a crass
simplification. First Germans voted for the parties that pledged to end
nuclear power. Then Merkel won the next election, cancelled nuclear-
prohibition. But when Fukushima happened everybody knew Merkel would be out of
office within weeks if she didn't immediately repeal her repeal.

~~~
StreamBright
You can play the emotional cord any time to get voters to vote on anything,
and you can make any multi-dimensional problem single dimensional. Increasing
fossil fuel usage is not the answer and it never will be the answer. Once we
have great solar panels and large capacity batteries we can use solar as the
primary source, but the technology is decades away, best case.

This does not look good:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Electric...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Electricity_Production_in_Germany.svg)

~~~
labster
We do have large capacity batteries for solar right now, it's called pumped
hydro storage. It's a droughtful prospect here in California, but I could see
it working out in Germany pretty well.

~~~
woodpanel
I do think too battery improvement will mean a major progress.

However, I invite you to visit my country. Pick any date in the year but two
months and you'll see: "capacity batteries for solar" are not our problem with
solar ;-)

~~~
labster
Heh, I'll just extrapolate from my visits to Seattle. I will try to visit next
year -- during one of the sunny months.

Actually, I think a lot of the problems facing Europe with renewables are the
same in the U.S. Abundant solar and wind available in the south, and no
efficient way of transferring the electric power north.

------
coolgoose
Phew, i do know that some of their reactors are pretty old but imho nuclear
overall is pretty safe and one of the best ways available still for producing
vast amounts of electricity. Hopefully they will build new ones to phase out
the old

~~~
tobltobs
"pretty old" is an embellishment in this case. They run the OLDEST nuclear
reactor of the world.

To repeat it, one of the richest countries of the world runs the oldest
nuclear reactor in the middle of central Europe. If this one blows up
Switzerland and Southern Germany is toast forever. There will be no lucky wind
directions.

And it doesn't help that the Swiss don't have a independent regulating
authority for nuclear energy.

~~~
guscost
It's a PWR:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beznau_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Tec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beznau_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Technical_specifications)

A PWR isn't going to "blow up" when it gets too old, or at all really.
Chernobyl, the only large-scale plant to ever actually blow up, had a crazy
dangerous design compared to any of these older reactors (and you're not
kidding about them being old, they are seven years older than Chernobyl).

~~~
maxerickson
11 Chernobyl type reactors are still in operation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK)

(some of the design problems have been addressed in the still operating
reactors)

~~~
m_mueller
Looking at the chain of events during the tests that lead to the accident I'd
say it was mostly human error as well as the flawed hierarchical structure of
soviet organisation. The critical reactor design flaws were all accounted for
in protocols that were not followed by the higher up being present against the
strong advice of the engineers. Had these been followed, nothing would have
happened, although there is one flaw they probably didn't account for: the
power spike during control rod insertion, which has been fixed with an updated
control rod design and protocols.

I'd argue that any reactor design that doesn't just allow to be shut down and
walked away from, is inherently unsafe - it's just that RBMK have far worse
consequences when humans screw up, which can be seen as their fundamental
flaw, they basically miss a safety net in the form of an auxillary
containment. Fukushima showed what could happen in reactors like the ones used
in Switzerland - IMO that's way more manageable than climate change, although
the question remains whether 'china syndrome' is possible and how such a true
worst case would look like. I once did some rough calculations on how much
radioactive material is present in typical reactors, and it's really quite
staggering - dispersed in bad ways you basically get lethal doses for hundreds
of millions of people.

So the only sane way forward IMO is to finally replace all these old designs
with ones that have passive cooling systems in an emergency, meanwhile passing
housing laws for new houses that require a certain percentage of solar roof, x
amount of kWh battery per inhabitant as well as the ability to feed the grid
from both roof and battery in order to create a stable renewable grid.
Unfortunately no green party is pragmatic enough - their anti nuclear stances
mean that we'd have to increase carbon reliance before being able to decrease
it, which poses IMO greater dangers than even the worst case imaginable with
nuclear. Therefore I'd rather vote for those who want to keep nuclear rather
than those who promote renewables.

~~~
lucaspiller
I can't find a source for it now, but I remember reading about an incident at
Ignalia-1 in Lithuania, that foresaw the design issues that caused the
Chenobyl incident a few years before. Apparently it was reported, but the
Soviet leadership decided not to do anything about it and keep it secret.

Even though Ignalia-2 had the most advanced safety features of any RBMK
reactor, a condition of Lithuania's EU membership was the plant be shutdown.
As such the Baltic states have been very dependant on Russia for energy since
the shutdown.

Belarus is in the process of building a plant on the Lithuanian border.
Although it's PWR and has many safety features RBMK didn't have, thanks to
politics the lack of transparency over safety issues is rather concerning:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/belarus-
under-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/belarus-under-fire-
for-dangerous-errors-at-nuclear-plant)

~~~
m_mueller
Soviet administration is kind of hard to wrap my head around. You'd think that
(1) no financial incentives (ideally) and (2) accountability based on 'see you
in the Gulag' if something goes wrong, would lead to people being more
transparent about risks - but it seems the opposite happened!

Is it because those who have to bear the risks (e.g. RBMK on-site engineers)
aren't the same who'd pass on information through the administrative chain?
Was the main thing missing free information flow? Could communism work if all
economic/infrastructure/administration units would just be forced to publish
all their data in raw form, so other people could analyse it and make better
decisions?

------
amenghra
The problem with the plan was that the government would have had to compensate
the power plants for shutting down earlier than planned + pay to import
(supposedly coal generated) power from neighboring countries.

The whole thing made no financial or ecological sense.

If you can read french, the official info (with both sides' opinion) is here:
[https://www.admin.ch/dam/gov/fr/Dokumentation/Abstimmungen/E...](https://www.admin.ch/dam/gov/fr/Dokumentation/Abstimmungen/Erl%C3%A4uterung%20des%20Bundesrates/novembre2016/27-11-2016_FR_screen.pdf.download.pdf/27-11-2016_FR_screen.pdf)

And a german version is available here:
[https://www.admin.ch/dam/gov/de/Dokumentation/Abstimmungen/N...](https://www.admin.ch/dam/gov/de/Dokumentation/Abstimmungen/Novembre2016/27-11-2016_DE_screen.pdf.download.pdf/27-11-2016_DE_screen.pdf)

