It always amuses me when nuclear power is the one area where the left becomes Very Concerned about excessive government spending.

despite 70 years of tinkering and trying it hasn't managed to make a noticeable dent in fossil fuel

Except for France which came up with the clever strategy of "not banning it", but that was apparently a mistake and they should have just used fossil fuels?

Now their nuclear operator is €50 billion in the negatives

€50 billion for several decades of clean energy seems like a pretty good deal.

France also produces less CO2, sell electricity at reasonable and stable cost.

If fossil fuel weren't massively subsided (impact the environment for free, wars with taxpayer money), Nuclear would have made a massive dent.

Producing the same with other sources will have a massive immediate impact on the land / environment.

It hasn't made a significant contribution because of panic after the various accidents and the "environmentalists" deciding to advocate against it when it was the clearest path to accomplishing their stated goals.

> Switzerland has no uranium and no strong relationship with an uranium-producing country. They also regularly antagonise the EU (especially the far-right isolationisz SVP/UDC, which is... pro-nuclear, of course) which controls every way fission products could be brought inside Switzerland.

It is reasonable to have a many-year strategic reserve of uranium for what you need. A modern reactor is going to go through 20 tonnes of enriched fuel a year and they refuel every 18-24 months. 5-10 years of security and stability is much, much better than oil and gas.

> The same far-right country is also the one who wanted to cap the population because "there isn't room anymore", but I guess there is now room for massive nuclear plants and the storage of fuel and spent fuel shrugs

There isn't enough room in my house for anymore people but there's enough room for a new couch. How can these things both be true? Probably because the two have entirely different requirements and "there isn't room" is shorthand for many, many things.

Not saying they're right, this is just a bad counter-argument, especially since the alternatives all have the same problem.

> Nuclear will also boil over Swiss rivers and shallow lakes.

Yes, you need water capacity for cooling, about 2x as much as a gas plant for the same output. Definitely a trade-off. I don't know or care enough about Swiss water access to argue here.

> has no uranium and no strong relationship with an uranium-producing country

The uranium-producing countries are Kazakhstan, Canada, and Namibia. There is zero chance that you cannot get one of those to sell to you.

> Nuclear will also boil over Swiss rivers and shallow lakes.

Wut?

You can make decades stocks of the fissile source

>Nuclear will also boil over Swiss rivers and shallow lakes.

What on earth are you talking about?