One of the bids for the third reactor was for KEPCO's APR-1400. Like the other bids, it was too expensive to make sense without subsidies.

China probably fits in the "politically undesirable" category these days.

There is no such thing as cheap nuclear reactor. Even cheaper Chernobyl type is expensive to build.

China and South Korea build everything more cheaply because they have a better developed industrial base.

Solar and wind is still vastly cheaper for them and still much cheaper when paired with storage.

Switzerland is not part of the European economic area, aka EEA.

Just the opposite. It's literally not in the EU. It's literally in Europe but not in the EU.

So its really safe, but also the evil regulations make it expensive. I'm certain there's ZERO correlation between regulations that make it expensive and regulations making it safe....................

So, where is the free market shitting out nuclear power? Anywhere?

Ah yes, environmentalists have been running the world for the last few decades.

Nuclear has never been financially viable and to the degree there has been “environmental” opposition it’s been NIMBY opposition to either the siting of the reactors or the siting of the disposal.

But again, the primary reason no one is building nuclear is because it’s incredibly expensive.

Ah, yes - "the evil environmentalists." Congratulations, you really torched that straw man.

We stopped building nuclear reactors in the early 1970ies[0], long before there was any large organized civil movement organizing against it - because with the required additional complexity to make them safe, the technology was just too expensive.

(As always - it's the capitalists that messed things up, not civil society.)

Despite having 70 years of progress, nuclear today is more expensive than ever. It just doesn't scale.

France's nuclear operator EDF is €50 billion in debt. They make about €3 billion per year - and have between €150 - €200 billion investments on the table for the next 10 years. Go figure.

[0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

>environmentalists have choked it to death.

Those regulations you despise were written in blood.

Moreover, Nuclear power enjoys free catastrophe insurance. If a Fukushima style meltdown happens, the taxpayer is always on the hook for 95%+ of the cleanup costs.

So yeah, all you have to do is let them keep their freebie insurance, lavish them with subsidies and water down the regulations which make it vastly more likely that they'll need to use it.

Or just build some solar, some wind and some storage, save a mountain of cash and have new generation projects take under five years to finish instead of more than 20.

What counts as "fast and cheap" ?

For the renewables "Fast and cheap" turns out to mean you get the paperwork in the winter and you build a solar farm that summer, it's not quite sowing wheat - teams of competent people building the farm isn't the same thing as just chucking the seeds into the dirt with a machine, but the timeframe isn't so different.

Sweden's nuclear plants seem to have taken maybe 6+ years from breaking ground (not paperwork) to first power, so if you begin today you might have a plant in 2032 at the earliest. I can't see any prices, not even a CfD strike price for Sweden's new proposed plants.

The UK agreed £92.50 strike price (2012 prices) for the new nukes it may never actually receive, but unlike Sweden the UK has never pledged to relinquish nuclear weapons so to some extent having a native "nuclear" capability is relevant to national security.

1. Nuclear has a negative learning curve. It’s gotten more expensive with time. Part of the reason is increasing geopolitical risks (the U.S. just launched a war on Iran because of the possibility it may upgrade nuclear material to weapon capabilities), lost knowledge and expertise, and also the increasing relative cost of financing in the cost of energy projects.

2. Nuclear was built at a time when governments were much more likely to directly invest in energy projects. It didn’t have to compete with Labubus for private dollars.

3. Its current competition didn’t exist, given how much cheaper solar and wind have gotten, and how much cheaper battery tech has gotten with signs all of them will only get even cheaper. And on the non renewable side, natural gas has become incredibly cheaper as well.

Process works if you keep building, expanding and making it safer. If you don’t build it for decades, you’re basically starting from scratch.

It is a hard sell when you have to front a good chunk of money, without a track record of successful build ups. It applies to other infrastructure stuff like HSR.

No reactor has yet even reached the operating age of 60 years. That 80 years number is wholly speculative.

We stopped building nuclear reactors in the 1970ies[0] because with the additional complexity to make them safe, the systems were just too expensive.

It has nothing to do with "relentless irrational opposition".

[0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

I am member of the SP in Switzerland and I am pro nuclear.

I don’t know why we put people in political buckets. It’s good to disagree. I am probably the weird guy but so be it.

Switzerland's multilingual situation might look primed for a balkanized culture war, especially if you are coming from a place where that is common. But 1) it's a country of 10m people and 2) the national identity is centered around being unified despite language differences.

Of course people make jokes and remarks about "those people" who speak a different language. But "those people" are probably 1h away by train, are probably coworkers, and their language was taught in your school (even if some didn't bother to learn).

We have national media (German: srf, French/Italian: rts, Romanche: rtr), people consume that, and a few medias that have multiple language versions like 20minutes.

We also have a few language specific medias (German: NZZ, Tagesanzeiger, Blick, ..., French: Le Temps, 24 heures, La Liberté, ...), but I think most people consume Swiss media, especially when Swiss politics and local afairs are absolutely not covered by French and German medias.

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