“The Swiss government wants to cancel a ban on building new nuclear plants that’s been in place since 2018,” reports Bloomberg News.
“Switzerland currently has four aging nuclear plants, and also relies heavily on renewable sources for its energy supply. At a meeting on Wednesday, the government announced it will propose the changes to current legislation by the end of the year, with parliament set to discuss them in 2025 before the issue is likely put to a referendum.”
Switzerland relies heavily on electric power generated in other countries. Only about 30% of its electricity is produced in Switzerland. 36.3% of Swiss energy comes from oil, while 12.8% comes from gas. Swiss domestic electricity production is cleaner: 62% is from hydropower plants, while 29% is from nuclear power, which results in no greenhouse gas emissions.
Unlike neighboring Italy, Switzerland has a growing population.
A recent study found that nuclear power is best for the environment. Yet green activists in places like Germany have still forced the closure of nuclear power plants. And they have done so even though “every major study, including a recent one by the British medical journal Lancet, finds the same thing: nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity,” says a long-time environment activist. “Solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste,” such as “dust from toxic heavy metals including lead, cadmium, and chromium.” Unlike wind farms, nuclear power plants don’t kill birds. And “wind turbines, surprisingly, kill more people than nuclear plants.” “Nuclear power is the safest form of energy we have, if you consider deaths per megawatt of energy produced,” notes Yale University professor Steven Novella.
Nuclear plants generate most electric power in countries like France and Slovakia, but in the U.S., nuclear power plants provide only about 19% of all power. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes it very expensive to construct a nuclear plant — even the application process is incredibly expensive and usually takes years of unnecessary delay. Even when nuclear plants are already operating safely and providing badly needed power, anti-nuclear activists sometimes get government officials to shut them down. Recently, however, the NRC approved the construction of a nuclear plant with an innovative design and a non-water cooled reactor.
