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Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

reuters.com

31–40 of 632 posts

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#32

What I find incredible is: Once this fully ramps up, this one power plant is expected to satisfy 14% of the entire country's electricity needs. 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7.

That's the average. But you'd need a few more for peak demand and a few more for when these are offline for maintenance, refuelling etc.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#33
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the success of anti-nuclear rhetoric, we became pretty incompetent at building these things. It's just like the space program.

The anti-nuclear crowd being successful might just be an alternate spin on the failure of the nuclear industry.

Or the actual spin/might of the fossil-extracted energy industry.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#34
post #4

What I find shockingly absent in this article is any commentary on budget and cost overruns. I'm definitely not anti-nuclear but it stands to reason that a comparison vs other forms of energy would've been wise to consider.

Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not much working experience or available sub contractors. Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. If nuclear energy…

    > Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that.
Any insight into the why?

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#35
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the success of anti-nuclear rhetoric, we became pretty incompetent at building these things. It's just like the space program.

The anti-nuclear crowd being successful might just be an alternate spin on the failure of the nuclear industry.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#36

What I find incredible is: Once this fully ramps up, this one power plant is expected to satisfy 14% of the entire country's electricity needs. 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7.

That's the average. But you'd need a few more for peak demand and a few more for when these are offline for maintenance, refuelling etc.

A bit of pumped hydro storage would also satisfy those needs.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#37
post #4

What I find shockingly absent in this article is any commentary on budget and cost overruns. I'm definitely not anti-nuclear but it stands to reason that a comparison vs other forms of energy would've been wise to consider.

Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not much working experience or available sub contractors. Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. If nuclear energy…

I think this is vastly misunderstood in the (artificial) renewables vs nuclear conversation. We keep building effectively one-off complex machines, and then flushing all that knowledge down the drain by saying it cost too much and took too long. Like yes, the first one always takes longer and costs more...

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not much working experience or available sub contractors. Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. If nuclear energy…

> Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. Any insight into the why?

[deleted]

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#39
post #4

What I find shockingly absent in this article is any commentary on budget and cost overruns. I'm definitely not anti-nuclear but it stands to reason that a comparison vs other forms of energy would've been wise to consider.

Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not much working experience or available sub contractors. Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. If nuclear energy…

The Wikipedia page on the plant has a very detailed timeline of this 22-year long endeavour.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#40
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the average. But you'd need a few more for peak demand and a few more for when these are offline for maintenance, refuelling etc.

A bit of pumped hydro storage would also satisfy those needs.

PSH could not bridge demand for long enough. Maintenance cycles on nuclear reactors can be quite long.
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