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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the End-of-an-Era dept.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/switzerland-votes-phase-nuclear-energy-121710224.html

Swiss voters have backed government plans to replace the power from ageing nuclear reactors with renewable energy.

A total of 58.2 per cent of voters supported the phaseout of nuclear energy in a binding referendum on Sunday. Under the Swiss system of direct democracy, voters have the final say on major policy issues.

The plan will provide billions of pounds in subsidies for renewable energy, ban the construction of nuclear plants and decommission the country’s five existing ones, which produce about a third of the country’s electricity.

[...] The move echoes efforts across Europe to reduce dependence on nuclear energy and has been in the making following Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011. Germany has announced it will close all nuclear plants by 2022 and Austria banned it decades ago.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:29AM (1 child)

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:29AM (#513888)

    At least, the Swiss have the best kind of landscape when it comes to storing renewable energy. And they're really good at digging caves and tunnels to hide that mess from view. But there's a whole season that's not highly friendly to Solar, and wind has to be carefully located...

    I suspect the French nukes will be happy to supply for shortfalls, like they often supply the UK and Germany.

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  • (Score: 1) by aim on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:35AM

    by aim (6322) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:35AM (#514095)

    At least, the Swiss have the best kind of landscape when it comes to storing renewable energy. And they're really good at digging caves and tunnels to hide that mess from view. But there's a whole season that's not highly friendly to Solar, and wind has to be carefully located...

    I suspect the French nukes will be happy to supply for shortfalls, like they often supply the UK and Germany.

    What's often missing in making this assessment is climate change. There's much less water/snow coming down these past years than was the norm. This not only affects hydro power (and drinking water!), but also makes for less cooling available for the nukes (which have to run at lower power or have to be entirely turned off - already happened several times for french nukes), or for hydro-based storage facilities. I also read that current hydro in Switzerland (60% of their own production, the nukes are most of the other 40%) doesn't cover costs, so it's not exactly surprising they're keeping their (mostly already quite old) nukes running as long as (in their own estimation - and I do have high esteem for swiss engineers) sufficiently safe. Sensibly, one of the main approaches is power savings, e.g. by renovating existing buildings.